Some of the very best content creators at the recently concluded WOW Virtual Pakistan 2021 discussed what it was to them to write a story and to bring it to life for their audiences....
HAPPENINGS
Telling stories. I’d always admired people who could – and would – tell stories. Fun, interesting, with morals, without morals. Entertaining. Teaching. Fiction or non-fiction, that world, or rather those words, used to have an impact on how I perceive people around me and how I perceive myself; ever-changing. The only constant in this story was that despite the differences in characters, plots, narrative styles, language, they were all relatable.
Some of the very best content creators at the recently concluded WOW Virtual Pakistan 2021 discussed what it was to them to write a story and to bring it to life for their audiences.
May I Have This Seat by Tabish Habib portrayed a young and rebellious pregnant woman travelling by bus where she gets into an altercation with a conservative father on the smoggy roads of Lahore, Pakistan. “I feel that the representation of characters, whether in film or just mainstream media, is very polarised and I just feel that human beings in real life are not all good or all bad; they’re a mixture a little bit of good a little bit of bad and that’s what makes them human. That’s why the main characters Sonya and Masood in my film are presented with a lot of nuance.”
In order to be a success, it was essential that the actors understood their roles well and embody them instead of just memorising dialogues. “We talked to the actors during auditions and rehearsals about their characters. A lot of planning and research was involved to pull it off because the story portrayed both sides at fault which is not the case in society. Especially the ending when Masood got up and went from the men’s section towards the other side and looked back at the former from the women’s perspective. This is crucial – to look at the world from different perspectives and to more empathetic towards someone who might be having a hard time.”
A story may be delivered for its audience but what it comes to be for the creators and the people involved in the process is significant itself. When Zoya Uzair presented Rukh, she felt she knew all there was to know about this artist and activist who had been her neighbor for a couple of years. “Lala Rukh is definitely a personality that goes beyond the realm of just one person or one label. A lot of people asked me who my audience for it was. One purpose is to tell people more about Lala, those who did not know her that this is a person as ordinary as me and you and yet has done incredible things in her life in the time and capacity that she has been given. However, more than that I wanted people who already knew Lala to feel nostalgic and to just remember her. I remember when I wrote the film, I was like it covered all the important details from what I knew about her personally, but then during the process there was so much I discovered and wish I could have shown.”
But that was just the tip of the huge personality Lala Rukh is. “After the screening of the film, after so many people came up to me and appreciated it, I realised that I was only now discovering Lala Rukh as a person, as an artist, and as an activist. She was friends with people of every age group from every walk of life, from her students to colleagues from WAF (Women’s Action Forum) to the artist community to her family to everyone who visited the same park as hers and often sought her advice. This is one person who has been incredibly active and appreciative of the life that was given to her, and the great thing about her is not that she has lived it, it is how her life keeps on living in so many different people for years to come.”
The fact that few films are being made in our industry and fewer still that have women at the helm does not put off Zoya Hassan. “You sort of have to keep reminding yourself why you started in the first place. And I feel like this is the thing I can do; it’s the only way to express my opinion because as a person I’m an introvert. Since you have to generate your own opportunity in life to be at the right place at the right time to get the kind of work you want to get, I try to be part of creative process of a film and not to be too rigid or specific of the department I work in. By the end of the day, it’s about being a part of something that is trying to tell a story so I just look for projects that I’d find interesting and worth bringing to the audience.”
Her film U-Turn is about a middle-aged housewife struggling to find her purpose in life after her daughter has started working professionally and no longer needs her to be around 24/7. “I think women telling women stories is a very important thing but that it is not how you write a story, i.e. with an agenda. You have to look for a character that is worth exploring. In this case, U-Turn is not just about a middle-aged woman experiencing change; as a 20-something, I [connect with it because I] feel things are constantly changing and I have to accept it. I have to let go of some things and rediscover myself throughout my life, to find a different passion to keep going.”
However, the minority groups (read women, people of colour, people with certain ethnicity) still have a long way to go before they are celebrated as a human being with a validated lived experience stresses Iram Parveen Bilal, Pakistani filmmaker and founder of Qalambaaz, Pakistan’s first professional screenwriting lab. “We live in a world where there’s so much systematic oppression everywhere. Being a woman, a Pakistani, a Muslim is tough in the industry that favours men, white people and those with resources. Of course, the sterotypes then not only affect the types of stories that get green light in general, they put an expectation too on the types of stories I can tell in particular. Creating content is one thing, distributing it on a mass way is where the real change lies so it’s not just storytellers, it’s also distributors who have to get on board and support stories that are diverse whether in USA or Pakistan.”
Besides, innovation doesn’t necessarily mean in technology only; storytelling and representation need to evolve as well. “Quite often the hardest subjects can really be communicated through stories so we cannot keep thinking of films as this other thing, separate to us. We are a species that has told stories since the beginning of time and we need to start respecting the artists more.
