Pakistani director wants to inject some horror into local film industry
Last Updated: Friday, July 20, 2007 | 5:47 PM ET
CBC Arts
A Pakistani filmmaker is getting unprecedented attention with a movie based on his own favoured Hollywood fare — horror flicks.
Omar Ali Khan, director of Zibahkhana (Hell's Ground), describes his film as "a very low budget, scuzzy, rough-edged, cheesy little horror film."
Film director Omar Ali Khan loves American horror films and hopes Pakistani film-goers will too.
(Anjum Naveed/Associated Press)
But he thinks it's a badly needed antidote to what's being churned out by Lollywood, Pakistan's declining film industry, which produces poor imitations of Bollywood-style movies with worn-out plots and tired song and dance numbers.
The local film industry has appealed for government help, but Khan's goal is merely to get his film into cinemas and "entertain the pants off people."
Hell's Ground premiered in March at Denmark's biggest film festival and was shown at the Philadelphia Film Festival.
However, it has yet to be cleared by Pakistani censors for official screening. Khan hopes for an August release date.
"We'd like to rock the movie scene here. Our film demolishes all the traditional film-making barriers in Pakistan," Khan said. "We hope it will inspire some to take more risks."
Hell's Ground was cheered at sold-out unofficial screenings in Pakistan and, with its Hollywood ethic, it is getting a lot of attention from the Western media.
"We had zero expectations," said Khan, who studied film in the U.S. and is a fan of old horror movies such as My Bloody Valentine and Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The film centres on five jeans-clad teenagers who cut classes, then lose their way en-route to a rock concert.
The story unfolds with blood, gore and a measure of humour as they stumble across a psychotic family, zombies and a cannibalistic killer dressed in a burqa, the head-to-toe robe worn by women in conservative Muslim communities.
The director says there's a reflection of contemporary values in its depiction of Westernized, urbanized Pakistani youth who find themselves aliens in Pakistan's still mainly rural culture.
