1 saal 2 maheenay aur 1 din.. This was the last time I posted anything and that too was of a movie. So why am I writing a post now? Honestly speaking I just discovered Snap chat and realized I need followers: D so shamelessly using this post to advertise my snap chat ID.. :) but jokes a part. I just felt like writing something on Pakistani Cinema and in addition to this post, me and Sadaf will be soon doing a podcast on Pakistani Cinema so this is a kind of promotion for that as well :D ( Genius at marketing ) !!

On a Serious note. Its been good 5 years ever since Pakistani Movies started making noise. Mein hoon Shahid Afridi Started it all and later waar carried on to the wave. Then came Namloom Afraad that announced the arrival of a brilliant story teller Nabeel Qureshi and suddenly it felt that Pakistani Cinemas was out of the toddler mode. Movies like Yeh Jawani phir nahi anni and Actor in law were the complete product in terms of story, direction acting and dialogues.

We all started to believe that Pakistani movies have finally found their own place or did they really?

During the last few days I have been reading reviews of the movie Verna. So I decided to watch the movie so I could review it, however, I will be honest, I left the theatre so distasteful that I never even wanted to write a review of it, I honestly don’t want to join the negative bandwagon. So instead I thought of writing a general post about what’s wrong with Pakistani Cinema.

There are couple of things that makes a Movie go in its favor. Few of them are Production Value, Story, Direction, music and Marketing. However, there is one more thing that our producers and director don’t give importance to and that’s taking the viewers for granted.

Yup, you read it right. Taking the viewers for granted and imposing self intellect on them.The example of this could be Namaloom Afraad part 2, The movie had everything in its favor,, The director , the Cast , the music, the production value.. however, the director took the viewers for granted and gave them a crappy story. Result? The movie had the potential of being a block buster however it barely covered its cost. Yes it was declared a hit because of it being released during the festival season, however as a viewer it had nothing to offer. and that’s exactly the reason why it should be a wake up call for producers and directors.

The other big fundamental issue that our movie creators need to take care of is that they need to increase the ratio of male centric movies. What they need to realize is that Cinema is different than TV and the metrics they use on TV can not be used for Cinemas. When it comes to TV the target Audience are mostly women, House wives who have easy access to TV and don’t have to step out of their home, however if they have to watch a movie, majority of them are dependent on their male companion to accompany them. So if the movie is full of male bashing and showing the male as someone who is always the villain it will always end up having less male viewers ,why will I go to watch a movie that will be showing me as the main villain so the ratio of women centric movies need to be 30 /70 and the example of this can be seen from Bollywood where they produce more movies that are male centric which brings in audience and hence a lot of money.

Pakistani Cinema is still in its revival stages and it will take a lot more time before we can start making main stream movies based on women issues. For that you already have TV which is a fully women centric medium.

So to sum it all Pakistani Cinema can not afford to make a wrong move because at the end of the day it’s the audience that’s the king they have the power to like or dislike a movie no matter which big name is associated with it. The movie may appeal to a niche audience however that will not bring in masses hence making it a loss on investment by the producers. We need better stories and better strategy , so far they have sold the idea of ” watch own cinema , support pakistan” very well :) but it wont go on forever.. as we karachite use a slang ” kab tak yeh manjan bechoo gay? ”