LAHORE: The cinemas in the country continue to face a crunch time primarily due to ban on Indian movies and inadequate local production.

Many good movies have been exhibited in recent times but these, say the stakeholders, are too few to help revive the industry. And these flicks attract the cinema-goers on occasions such as Eid, leaving the rest of the year with not much to offer.

There was a time, they recall, when the film producers would say they did not have sufficient number of cinemas to exhibit their movies since the owners were more interested in screening Indian ones that brought significant profit.

Hardly 10 to 15 films were release in 2019 and these included Super Star, Paray Hat Love, Wrong Number 2, Chalawa and Sher Dil. Super Star did a Rs270 million business and Paray Hat Love, Baji, Heer Maan Ja and Lal Kabootar found place in top ten movies. But the films released on Eids are too few to make any difference.

“It takes many, many years to improve things when it comes to the sufficient supply of movies,” says Pakistan Film Exhibitors Association chairman Zoraiz Lashari. The ban on Indian films has almost finished the cinema business, he deplores.

“My own cinema Sozo World is running into losses for quite some time now,” he says. There were around 1,500 cinemas in the country in 1980s but the number has been reduced to 150 now, he says.

As for the issue of distinction in the rates of tickets, he says the facilities such as air-conditioners and modern screens are necessary to attract crowds and all these entail soaring expenses. Citing an example, he says, there is a Rs4 million monthly electricity bill of a cinema and that’s just one head.

“Yes, if the government provides electricity to cinemas at a cheaper rate, the ticket prices could be lowered,” he says.

The present scene is that the cinemas that have five screens are running just two to avoid soaring expenses and still struggling to survive.

Meray Pass Ho Tum fame Khalilur Rehman Qamar, a playwright and film producer, believes negative comments on the social media and by some bloggers make the situation worse.

“They don’t even watch the film and at times even before the screening of the movie they write negative blogs that affect viewership,” he says.

“We can’t support our film industry by following such a negative trend,” he says. Another point he makes is that without bulk production of quality movies in Punjab, the cinema business can’t flourish because 70pc of film revenue is generated from this province.

Film producer and distributor Chaudhry Kamran also regrets the fact that the cinema business is on a nosedive. A constant flow of qualitative films the whole year through can help revive the drowning business, he says.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2020