(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
The shutting down threat pushed Pakistan Film Exhibitors’ Association (PFEA) to call a strike to
demand government’s permission to exhibit Indian films in 2004. The exhibitors claimed that
the government is wasting time on fruitless promises and exercises for cinema revival....
If there are no cinemas, where will movies run? [Therefore,] the Pakistan Film
Exhibitors’ Association demand[s] to exhibit the 100-odd old Indian films lying in stock
with them, import latest Indian movies and make co-productions (Ramzi, 2004c).
Subsequently, the government relaxed laws for the screening of such Indian films that were
produced and shot outside India, and had a Pakistani co-producer, or cast (Mazhar, 2007;
“Karachi: Indian films,” 2007). The strike pointed to government’s failure to curb film piracy
(“Karachi: Cinemas,” 2007) that got in the way of legal exhibition of Indian films. In
continuation to the above, the Pakistan Film Exhibitors’ Association called for another cinema
strikes in 2007. An article “Karachi: Film” covered the event, pointing to the closure of “more
than half of the cinema houses in Sindh and Balochistan,” while the remaining cinemas
outnumber the figures of “movies being produced in Pakistan” (2007). As Pakistani filmmakers
fail to meet the local requirements, the need for the legal import of Indian films and piracy
control was stressed by the strikers.
The strike reflected both the PFEA concern and a strategy for managing the lazy home viewing
audience. It reemphasized government’s failure to curb film piracy. As described in the article
“Karachi: Film,” exhibitors protested “against the government’s muddled policy towards the
industry, which is based on double standards at the cost of the livelihood of all those [who]
belonged to this business” (2007). The exhibitors held PEMRA responsible for muddying their
business and the government for playing negligent to “the gravity of the situation” (“Karachi:
Film”, 2007). Despite the PFEA failure to resolve the piracy issues, 20 Indian films were legally
screened in Pakistan from July 2007 to December 2008.
2008 ended with the echo of another cry for a ban on Indian films in the wake of the ongoing
tension between New Delhi and Islamabad. According to Ahmed, the exhibitors underscored that
the ban on the screening of Indian flicks would “ruin the cinema industry [as] the local industry
is not producing enough films to meet the demand for cinemas in the country. Furthermore, the
films produced here are formula movies and attract only a limited segment of society” (2008).
These arguments again highlighted a jittery debate on the issue of ban on Indian films among
different segments of society and film organizations.
Film Organizations and Distributors
The film organizations: Artistes Association of Pakistan (AAP), Movie Artists Association of
Pakistan (MAAP), Pakistan Film Producer’s Association (PFPA), Pakistan Cinema Owners
Association (PCOA), and Pakistan Film Exhibitors’ Association have endlessly debated the
decline and revival issues of Pakistani cinema with the governments for decades. Their opinions
co-vary on issues like piracy, copyright, and the screening of Indian films in the local cinemas.
They clearly occupy oppositional stances on the issues of the interest of the industry, cinemas,
and artists. According to Samdani, both AAP and MAAP aim at “restoring prestige and
professionalism of the film industry of Pakistan and creating conditions conducive to the
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