Mehreen Jabbar is a Pakistani woman filmmaker, director,

Mehreen Jabbar is a Pakistani woman filmmaker, director,Interview

‘Cinema has started reviving in Pakistan’

Mehreen Jabbar, 37, is a Pakistani director of feature films and television serials. She spoke with Avijit Ghosh about her latest film, ‘Ramchand Pakistani’, and the state of films in her country:

How did you conceive ‘Ramchand Pakistani’?
It’s based on a true story of an eight-year-old Pakistani Hindu boy and his father who cross into India by mistake. What happens to them in an Indian jail forms the core narrative. My father Javed Jabbar is the producer of the film. He has been running an NGO in Thar desert for the past 20 years. The father of the Hindu boy worked as a substitute teacher in one of his schools. During one of the trips he came to know of the incident, met the father and son. He interviewed them, wrote a synopsis and suggested the story to me. I felt it was a very powerful story; so we hired a screenplay writer who worked on the script for a year.

The family is Dalit. Is there a particular reason why?
That’s because in real life they are Dalits. Since the film is based on a true story, we stuck to who they were, their religion and their caste.

How difficult was it raising money for ‘Ramchand Pakistani’?
Raising money anywhere in the world is a huge problem for independent film-makers. In Pakistan, it is more challenging because there are no studios, grants or foundations. My mother Shabnam gave me the initial money. My father approached his friends and i went to mine. We collected money from 19 people. After that we got two Pakistani sponsors: a telephone company and a biscuit company.

You have studied cinema. Did you always want to make films?
I always wanted to make films. I grew in a family involved with the media world. My father made Pakistan’s first and only English language feature film, ‘Beyond the Last Mountain’, in 1976. My parents had an ad agency. I grew up around cameras. But i got out of advertising very fast. From 1993 onwards, i have been making Pakistani television serials and plays. I am based in New York but i do a lot of my work in Karachi.

There are not many women directors in Pakistan film industry. Right?
There are three Lollywood women directors who have made very successful commercial films: Sangeeta, Shamim Ara and Sameena Peerzada. The first two made films in the 1970s. Now they don’t. Last year, barely 15-20 films were made which is nothing in a country of 145-150 million people. Cinema has just started reviving. Most women directors today are in TV doing commercials, plays and music video. Hopefully the next generation of Pakistani film-makers will come from television. Shoaib Mansoor who did ‘Khuda Kay Liye’ is from television.

source:timesofindia