Sex, violence and zombies come to town in a new fantastic film festival from Pakistan this weekend

Sex, violence and zombies come to town in a new fantastic film festival from Pakistan this weekend

When Bangalore-based cinephile and writer Achal Prabhala travelled to Pakistan few years back to research and write an essay on fantastic cinema in Pakistan, he ended coming back with a bagful of DVDs belonging to this genre.
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"Since that time I have been interested in screening some of the better films I watched during the course of writing that essay. Fantastic is a term that encompasses the sci-fi, horror and fantasy genres," He says.

Prabhala got together with friends and fellow film lovers, city-based Swedish crime writer Zac O'Yeah and editor Vinayak Verma and together they dreamed up Pakstastic, a fantastic film festival from Pakistan.

To be screened over two days, the festival will show a documentary that explores this genre in South Asia followed by cult Pakistani films on horror, satire and even a slasher.
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"There seems to be a general preconception attached to horror cinema that it's all out-and-out gore whereas horror is anything that horrifies.

Blood is only one very crude, almost peripheral way of conveying horror. The real horror in horror cinema comes from the assault on one's deep-seated social and moral sensitivities." Verma says.

He explains with an example of Aurat Raj (a film to be screened), "For instance, the source of the viewer's horror (and, by turns, amusement) is the reversal of genders and their associated roles.
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Take any popular horror film or literature, for that matter. Frankenstein is about ostracism, Dracula is about xenophobia and repression and The Shining is about isolation, and so on.

Fantastic cinema is huge in Pakistan, as in India and elsewhere on the subcontinent. The choice of films at the festival is a perspective on film and also on Pakistan.

"These films offer a way in to a country that we otherwise only seem to understand in extremes - jingoistic nationalism or over-sweet love," Prabhala says.

Omar Ali Khan, director of Zibahkhana or Hell's Ground, a gore flick that released in 2007 is an ice cream parlour owner from Lahore who turned his passion for the fantastic genre into being a filmmaker.

The film is full of references to slashing, zombies, and the Texas Chains of Massacre.
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When asked about the importance or the fun of watching this kind of cinema O'Yeah says, "Genre cinema, like genre literature etc, is important to look at because it says a lot about popular culture in any given place.

Frequently genre cinema also manages to be more exploratory than serious cinema that tends to intellectualize and play it safe."

Apart from film screenings, the festival will feature discussions by Sudarshan Purohit translator of the Hindi pulp fiction novel The 65 Lakh Heist, TV, film and theatre person Prakash Belawadi, who will give his opinion as a cinema insider and Namita Malhotra from the Alternative Law Forum, who will discuss gender issues related to this kind of cinema.

Pakstastic Schedule

Mondo Macabro: Horror and Fantasy in South Asia (2002)
This documentary traces the horror and fantasy category of films in South Asia. Based on a television series and book of the same name Mondo Macabro is all about deadly assassins, zombies, violence, supernatural elements and lots of sex.
On May 22, 5pm

Zinda Laash (1964)
What happens when Dracula is born in Pakistan instead of Transylvania? Banned when it was first released way back in 1967, the film had the taboo of an X rating too. A Pakistani version of Dracula's story, watch out for the controversial baby stealing scene.
On May 22, 6:30 pm

Aurat Raj (1979)
Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned and the protagonist of this film Rani takes this saying to a nasty new level. Her husband Walid is a lecherous man with a roving eye. Fed up of him Rani forms her own feminist party with similarly victimised women and purchases an expensive bomb that threatens to turn all men into women and women into dykes with masculine voices. Enjoy this satire, considered to be a pathbreaking film in Pakistan.
On May 23, 5 pm

Zibahkhana (2007)
A bunch of college kids heading to a rock show decide to take a short cutu00a0 and end up getting stranded in a spooky village. For horror entertainment there are saree wearing zombies, wily midgets who gobble up enthrails of slain victims and even a burqa clad, mace swinging serial killer with an obsessed mother.u00a0
Director Omar Ali Khan
On May 23, 7:30 pm
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At 1, Shanthi Road, Shanthi Nagar
Call 98802 27706

At 1, Shanthi Road, Shanthi Nagar
On May 22 and 23, 5 pm onwards
Call 98802 27706