LAHORE, Dec 5: Pakistan’s film industry reaches the screen on Eidul Fitr today with an investment of over Rs65 million in three Urdu, two Punjabi and five Pashto language movies produced by the top directors of the country with star-studded credentials.

Always an important occasion for filmmakers, Eid this year has a rush of new movies that has never been on show in the past although even the most ardent supporters of the industry are disheartened by the stream of flops that have marked local cinema this year. Their eyes are now on the performance of new movies released on the religious festival.

Two notable factors are a revival of Urdu cinema and newfound enthusiasm in Pashto filmmakers who have not only re-entered the scene with five movies but reports inform of attempts at producing relatively instead of banking on vulgar dances and excess of violence serving as the signature feature of much of Pashto cinema in the past.

Normally, one or at best two Urdu films are released on Eid but the fare for today’s festival is Manila ke jasoos, Daku and Fire. The movies could well underline three attitudes and approaches as they represent the work of veteran director Iqbal Kashmiri (Manila ke Jasoos), Shan with his third movie as director (Daku) and Asif Ali Pota stepping in to the directorial frame with Fire.

The rest seems marked by similarities as the remaining credits ring familiar. Pota has sandwiched Moammar Rana between Rima and Meera. Other filmmakers, Shan, Kashmiri, Sangeeta (Sher-i-Azam) and Syed Noor (Budha Gujjar), both in Punjabi, have played it safe by leaning on the circuit-sponsored macho mannerism of Shan and above conventional standard vital statistics of Saima.

Noor has however gone one up on his competitors by casting Yusuf Khan in the pivotal role. Khan has staged a remarkable comeback with a series of characters specially written for him. It is actually for the first time in Pakistani cinema that instead of confining senior artistes of proven worth to fill gap status, scripts have been penned for an artist.

Khan has demonstrated tremendous capacity and talent for carrying movies on his histrionic shoulders. One of his earlier films of the current year, Arain da Kharak is still being shown in the circuit. Shan has more than one movie in circuit.

Another movie that has survived for a few months is Javed Shaikh’s Yeh Dil Aap Ka Hua.

There is one reportable change from previous years, however. New films are being released in three or a maximum of four theatres as against the practice of releasing them in six to half a dozen cinema halls in big cities. This reflects the shrinking options for producer as the strength of cinema halls has dwindled in major centres due to financial non-viability of running theatres as well as the high cost of prints.

As filmmakers are not fully certain of how their product would fare in the market, they have been trying to cut down expenses. Limiting number of prints of new movies at release time is one of their economy measures.