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The old cliché about one person's disaster being another's opportunity rings particularly true in Pakistan. The cinema after all is an industrial art form, and as such requires industrial levels of investment and production. Making a film is a huge and overarching financial undertaking.

Yet in Pakistan, it can be remarkably cheap to create a film. For starters, the advent of television has brought with it a whole raft of technicians available to work at extremely low prices. Some of Pakistan's best music video cameramen and editors even work readily with first-timers and novices for very low costs. Similarly, the development in digital technology means that extremely high end cameras and editing equipment are now widely available, and again, at very low costs.

All of which means that making a film is very much financially feasible. However, the next question is of distribution, and I think that is where filmmakers need to get creative. For starters, we cannot underestimate the potential of the internet. A few decades ago, it would be impossible to even conceive of a viewing space which would be available on demand to anyone who wanted it, and yet that is exactly what the internet affords us. Getting your film on YouTube means you get to show your work for free, and get instant feedback and suggestions. The entire process circumvents so many logistical obstacles that one would be very naïve or foolish to ignore this medium. In addition, there is now a plethora of TV channels anxiously waiting to devour content.

Both these areas are as yet unexplored avenues, and I see no reason why they should remain hostage to solely chand nawab (in the case of the internet) or news and dramas (in the case of TV) after all, almost all of Italian cinema, and a lot of European cinema in general, is financed by TV studios.

But now that the talk has come to finances, a certain caveat has to be put in place. If one is looking to make money from filmmaking, or indeed any artistic endeavour in Pakistan, then they are living in a fool's paradise. To this day, some of Pakistan's greatest stars are still found running after producers for unpaid dues. Some of the most respected figures in our history still find themselves in a hand-to-mouth situation. The story is no different whether you look at TV, music or films. This country still has a long way to go before the arts become a way of earning big riches. Whether that is a good thing or a bad one is besides the point. What filmmakers need to know is that it is not going to be an easy road, but the way forward is not wondering how to balance the books.

We have in front of us a huge audience – which we can reach in a variety of mediums –that is yearning for films. After all, Pakistan has the highest number of video rental stores per capita in the entire world. We love to watch films, and watching films made by us, about us and our issues is what we need.

As I have laid out above, the task requires reconnecting with our own pasts and traditions. This does not mean that we merely reboot and rehash the old paradigms. Rather, we need to learn from them to see how our audiences listen to and react to stories. What sort of narratives are organic to us and what sort of directions we can take with these. We need to ask questions about the role of songs in films, the portrayal of stock characters, how to deconstruct the stereotyping of genders, how to trace the transition of traditional morals and values in our contemporary society.

Of course any successful answer would have a good script and interesting characters, but that cannot be the only advice we need to take as filmmakers. Our mission needs to be about reinventing an art form, and no amount of exhortations from accountants and faux-critics should change that.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.