In the pre-partition secular cultural society of Lahore, one area that attracted greater attention of creative people was the then emerging glitzy world of entertainment. This included music, theatre and films. Their share of contributions to the evolution, refinement and promotion of these performing arts was immense. In turn, this helped in chiselling the cinematic personality of Lahore.
Even before the political division of British-administered India, Lahore had already become the fourth major film centre of South Asia. The other three were Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. About half a dozen film studios existed in the city in 1947. These produced movies, mostly in the Punjabi language, at regular intervals.
With the advent of the 40s, several highly successful Urdu movies were also produced from Lahore. This helped earn the city and its artistes a prominent place on the movie map of subcontinent, both from the standpoint of creative ingenuity and production values.
Included among the highly successful Urdu films produced from Lahore, before August 1947, were Khandaan, Khazanchi and Daasi. While the rich Hindus of Lahore, who owned all film studios and a vast majority of cinema houses in the city, provided funds needed for film-making, Muslims’ contributions to the new art of creative expression was in the form of ebullient artistic talent.
The production of silent films in Lahore began in 1923 and ended in 1932. The first silent film from Lahore was a documentary in 1923. It was made by Gopal Krishna Mehta, a retired railway officer, he shot the movie with an imported camera, which he used proudly to screen daily at his business premises on the Mall.
Lahore’s celluloid renaissance eventually occurred in 1925. At the forefront were a bunch of talented people, known as the Bhatti Gate crowd. They were led by A.R. Kardar, the silent film pioneer. Kardar was followed by Himansu Rai, who later founded the famous Bombay Talkies in Bombay. Included in this illustrious list of people who contributed much to the flowering of cinematic arts were, A.R. Kardar, R.L. and R.K. Shorey, Dilsukh M. Pancholi, Nazir and W.Z. Ahmed, J.K. Nanda, Daud Chaand, K.D. Mehra in the producers/directors categories.
Hira Lal, M. Ismail, Nazir, Gul Hameed, Pran, Jagdish Sethi, Najamul Hassan, Om Parkash, Majnu, Amer, M.D. Kanwar, Khursheed Bano, Kamini Kaushal, Nur Jehan, Ragni, Mumtaz Shanti and Manorma were from Lahore in the actors and actress category.
Composers and playback singers associated with Lahore film studios, names of Master Jhandhay Khan, Master Ghulam Haider, Shayam Sunder, Pundit Amer Nath Gobind Ram, Rafique Ghazanvi, Feroze Nizami, G.A. Chishti, Khurshid Anwar, Shamshad Begum and Hameeda Bano.
The cinematic personality of Lahore, however, suffered much at the dawn of independence, due to communal riots and the mass exodus of non-Muslim financiers and studio owners to India. Half of film studios of Lahore were completely gutted. Still out of the ashes of old Shorey Studios, emerged the Shahnoor Studios, which was rebuilt by Shaukat Husain Rizvi. For a year or two, film industry in Lahore remained almost at a stand still. This despite the fact that a large number of Muslim artistes had returned to the city from Bombay. Some of them like playback singers Hameeda Bano and Zubaida Khanum, actor/singer Inayat Husain and others used theatre as a mode of their creative expressions.
The film industry regained its composure by mid-1950s, when a new modern film studios were built.
Cinema, which is a powerful artistic medium, a purposeful educational force and a major source of entertainment, for a number of reasons, has suffered a qualitative decline in Pakistan. Still, after a decline in the popularity and effectiveness of theatre, which before the advent of motion pictures had thrived much, the new medium of films was bound to create enduring impact on the minds and lifestyles of the people.
Soon after the invention of talkies, the youth in Lahore and elsewhere began to spend their holidays in movie theatres. Having absorbed every conceivable gesture, line and action and the turns in the plots of the films, they relished spending the remainder of the week practising “their repertoires” in the living rooms, street corners and school and college grounds in the provincial metropolis.
So poignant was the power and so enduring was the impact of the films that it was no accident that some of the finest minds in Lahore during the past 70 years, especially poets, writers and intellectuals were sucked into its enchanting and absorbing vortex.
Since 1947, films in thousands have been produced from Lahore. Its old and new studios, which worked round the clock until mid-70s, brimmed with activities related to cinematic arts.
Until about ten years after the advent of television in Pakistan, films produced from Lahore studios, which reflected to a large measure the creative ingenuity of the Lahoris, held a complete sway over the world of entertainment. Despite paucity of resources and a limited market, a few astonishingly good movies came out of Lahore film studios during that period, which won popular acclaim for the artistes, kudos for the producers/directors and substantiated cultural identity of Lahore and vivacity of its citizens.
However, in mid-70s, the role of films as a dominant medium of entertainment was challenged as television come of age. Tele-dramas, long plays and serials produced by intelligent and sensitive individuals, took a fair chunk of the audiences away from films. However, the new phenomenon did not in anyway put a dent in the cultural identity of Lahore as some of the best talent earlier associated with the films joined television to vent their creative expressions retaining the centrality of Lahore to the cultural pursuits of life.
The emergence of a ‘New Wave’ in world cinema has failed to temper the excessive proclivity of our filmmakers to use violence, terror and brutality and take libidinous allowances. This resulted not only in corrupting the tastes of cine-goers, but also created a backlash of socially-harmful fallout. When one thinks nostalgically of old movies a rich tapestry of swirling images from many masterpieces of yore float in one’s memory recreating very satisfying feelings.
The present day Lahore is less than magnanimous in lending its best people to the cinematic arts. Consequently, the surviving few among a large number of Lahore film studios are today flooded with dubious kinds of individuals (especially the financiers), who, to say the least, do not enjoy good reputation.
This inadequacy of the Lahore based film industry has provided a handle to orthodox elements in our society to browbeat all those persons, who, in one way or the other, were associated with Pakistani cinema.
