LAHORE: The Alhamra Art Centre, Mall Road, was festooned with big panaflexes bearing images and verses of Faiz Ahmed Faiz as the three-day 9th International Faiz Festival kicked off here on Friday.

The annual festival is organised by the Faiz Foundation Trust, in collaboration with the Lahore Arts Council (LAC).

Seating arrangements were made in the lawns of Alhamra where people from different walks of life and age groups, especially the youth, had turned up to attend the festival.

The festival opened with the inaugural ceremony held outside Alhamra Art Gallery along with the inauguration of an exhibition of artworks titled, Tum Apni Kerni Ker Guzro, featuring art works by Sarah Ahmad.

Delegation of Indian writers, artists also attending the event

A delegation of artistes, philosophers and literary figures from India is also participating in the festival this year.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, MNA Mehtab Akbar Rashidi paid rich tributes to Faiz, saying his poetry is for everyone and that he wrote for the downtrodden and the oppressed.

Ms Rashidi said the festival is a good tradition where people meet and interact every year.

Atul Tiwari from India said he was visiting Pakistan for the fifth time and every time he gathered wonderful memories. He said Faiz wrote for people who were facing difficult situations, including the people of Palestine.

“Faiz was an international poet whose poetry had no boundaries,” he added.

Actor and director Nandita Das from India said she was in Pakistan for the festival and to show solidarity. She said that she was visiting Lahore after an eight-year gap and was feeling at home and meeting old friends here. Ms Das said she made a film on Manto in which she incorporated Faiz’s poetry.

LAC Board of Governors Chairman Razi Ahmed, speaking on the occasion, welcomed the Indian delegation to the festival. Ahmed said Lahore was the city of Manto, Faiz, Sadeqain and many other literary figures and artists.

Faiz Foundation Trust Chairperson Saleema Hashmi welcomed the audience and the Indian delegation to the festival. She later also inaugurated the exhibition by Sarah Ahmad.

Her artworks referred to local and international traumas absorbed by land and its inhabitants; we look at displacement in the regional US and Gilgit-Baltistan. It highlights these issues as part of larger patterns of colonial violence, land dispossession, and environmental injustice.

Her work is enmeshed with nature: with its ability to effect healing, recognising the connective tissue binding us to the earth. It speaks of inter-connectedness; of humans with the earth; among humans, and to life. It reunites fragmented parts of land in a process of healing from displacement, both internal and physical. Destruction transmutes into a landscape of renewed hope.

The exhibition pays tribute to the resilience of people whose spirit refuses to be crushed, who resurrect a path through wreckage, cultivating new futures.

A 90-minute documentary titled Suno Gup Shup based on a hit old PTV programme was also screened on the first day of the festival, followed by a discussion with the team of the hit play.

The session was moderated by Saleema Hashmi.

Director Farjad Nabi said he produced this documentary keeping in view the fact that the present-day social and political situation was not that rosy.

He said the social criticism in the TV programmes like Such Gup was still relevant.

Writer Mohammad Hanif said he never met Shoaib Hashmi, but liked the TV programme.

Samina Ahmed said Such Gup brought a wave of nostalgia, adding that she learnt a lot about humour and comedy during the production of the programme.

Navid Shehzad said Shoaib Hashmi, who was her teacher, had a great sense of humour.

She said at times when she looked at things being done in society, she thought that had Shoaib Sahed been here, he would have written a script on it.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2025