Written by: Nida Qasim
Posted on: December 13, 2021 | 
| 中文
'The Earth is Tough, The Sky is Far' is part of a documentary series 'Voices from the Roof of the World,' sponsored by the Aga Khan University
To promote Pakistani art globally, as well as transform local attitudes towards contemporary art and film, Foundation Art Divvy provides a platform for Pakistani artists to showcase their art internationally. It supports and arranges large-scale exhibitions of contemporary Pakistani art in public spaces on regular basis. Since last year, Art Divvy has introduced a film festival showcasing independent short films, feature films, documentaries, and animations created by Pakistani and Pakistani diaspora filmmakers, as well as by foreign filmmakers who have produced films relating to the Pakistani experience. After a successful show last year, Art Divvy is back to introduce a new range of films this year at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) in Islamabad. The program of 58 brilliant films has been split between Islamabad and Lahore. The first part of it ran from Thursday, 9th of December to Sunday, 12th of December at the PNCA. The festival is to continue in Lahore from the 16th to the 19th of December at the Punjab Institute of Language, Arts & Culture (PILAC). Each evening will be curated to create an immersive experience for the viewer, which will end with a discussion with the film directors.
The show continues at Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA)
The films shown at the film festival cover a variety of themes including human stories of love and heartbreak, coming of age, finding one’s true self, the resilience of heroic individuals, the trauma of loss, as well as the joy of ordinary and unexpected moments. The films are meant to help us tap into our own experiences and memories and to shine the light upon the hero that resides within each of us. The festival is showcasing films by a wide range of directors including Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Hamza Bangash, Sunil Shanker, Marya Javed, Umar Riaz, Farjad Nabi, Kamal Khan, Mian Adnan Ahmed, Samar Minallah Khan, Meher Jaffri, Jawad Sharif, and many other budding directors.
A frame from Nida Kirmani's short documentary 'Khel Khel Mein'
I was able to watch the following intriguing films on the day one of the festival: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Sitara (2019), Nida Kirmani and Dostain Baloch’s Khel Khel Mein (2021), Haya Fatima Iqbal’s The Sky is Far, The Earth is Tough (2021), Nauman Khalid’s One Way Glass (2021), Madyha Leghari’s Hairless (2019), and French director Manele Labidi’s Arab Blues (2021).
The first film shown at the festival was a short animated film, Sitara, directed by the Oscar-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Sitara, set in the walled city of Lahore in the 1970s, revolves around the life of a fourteen-year-old girl called Pari who dreams to become a pilot. But the societal scourge of child marriage inhibited her from fulfilling that dream. Sitara was the first Pakistani animated film that received distribution rights on Netflix and is available to watch on Netflix in more than 150 countries. What struck me about this film was the power of nonverbal communication and the pure reliance on the quality of the visuals in its animation as well as its entrancing music, which created the atmosphere of the walled city of the 1970s.
Poster of 'Sitara'
The second film was a short documentary, Khel Khel Mai, which was a story about three young women from Lyari (Karachi), an area that is known for being one of the most conflict-ridden parts of the city. These three courageous and novel women stood out in their active stance to alter the gender narratives and to empower other women in Lyari. The three women included a boxer, a woman who taught girls how to ride bicycles, and a gender activist who beautifully portrayed that there is no superiority of one gender over the other. The film spectacularly presented that the norms that we follow are merely created by the society that we live in and can be remodeled to fit a more authentic way of living; one that is not determined by one’s given gender.
The film poster of 'The Earth is Tough, The Sky is Far'
The third film The earth is tough, the sky is far revolves around the themes of climate change and mental health. The film featured Shahbano, Zarb Ali, and Nusrat, all residents of district Ghizer in Gilgit-Baltistan, which is one the most prone districts to climate disasters and is also host to a simmering mental health crisis. In this short documentary, Haya Iqbal, the director of the film, highlighted gut-wrenching stories about the natives of Gilgit-Baltistan who are affected by floods over time and again. The effects of losing their homes to floods caused by climate change were shown to be terrifying in the documentary as many of the women and men fell into mental health problems, grew suicidal tendencies, and lost meaning in their lives. Where before these people had access to land and were able to lead an agricultural lifestyle, they were now confined to small camps built for IDPs. Many of these internally displaced people expressed frustration that their days and nights were the same, and that they saw no future for the children in these temporary setups as there were no schools, hospitals, and other basic facilities. The worst part about it was that even the temporary homes could be flooded any day, as floods are common in the summers and avalanches in the winters in the whole region, and these have only increased with the increase in global warming.
Poster of 'Arab Blues'
The last 3 films were ‘One-way Glass’, ‘Hairless’, and ‘Arab Blues’. ‘One Way Glass’ is a story of a hapless migrant Pakistani woman trapped in a violent loveless marriage. The film followed her path to freedom via the revelation that her husband, like her, leads a clandestine parallel life. ‘Hairless’ followed a fictional city that is grappled with an inexplicable, complete loss of hair. ‘Arab Blues’ was about Selma, a psychoanalyst, who dealt with a cast of colorful new patients after returning home to Tunisia to start a practice.
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