What happens when a musician/filmmaker, architect, and performance artist meet? Milaap. Working through a grant offered by The British Council, Kazi, Mazhar, and Madhu worked together to explore how the existing way of working with natural water resources have panned out so far.

“So, this basically is a mini documentary that we‘re working on. We have to shoot three locations,and we’ve done two: the main documentary is still in edit,” begins Kazi. “The documentary is basically about how lack of proper planning is leading to future ecological devastations.

“[…] We have been careless about dumping, toxic industrial waste into rivers and how a lot of that river water is now undrinkable.

“Of our three locations, we have so far wrapped shooting at Taunsa Barrage and Panjnad Canal, the latter of which is the only point where five rivers of Pakistan meet. It’s an incredible visual. We have three female subjects and we are telling the story through their lens and through their experience.”

Kazi strongly encourages speaking to Marvi Mazhar, who is a researcher and architect, and works with visual culture and spatial advocacy and interventions to understand the subject matter better. Their third partner, Abuzar Madhu explores issues of cultural identity through performance art, and in the trailer of the documentary, is filling in as a translator for Punjabi/Siraiki where needed.

Milaap releases in June 2023, and along with the visual exploration, there will be a musical expression of this experience too. Zohaib Kazi, who recently introduced his Gulistan Janoobi series – also a visual and musical narrative – to an appreciative audience.