Written by: Nida Qasim
Posted on: October 27, 2021 | 
| 中文
Peter Bussian with Afghan children on the sets of 'Opium War'
Peter Bussian is an American independent filmmaker, photographer and visual media consultant. Originally from Colorado, he did his BA in philosophy and history from the University of Colorado, after which he moved to New York where he did his MFA in Film from Columbia University. He then went on to study at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Peter has written two photo-books, “Passage to Afghanistan” and “Trans New York”. He has made various documentary films on projects in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and Nigeria, and has also worked as a communications and media consultant on projects funded by several international NGOs. He was a producer and lead actor in Golden Globe winning Director Siddiq Barmak's "Opium War", which won multiple festival awards. Currently, Peter is on the faculty panel of Pakistan National Council of the Arts’ (PNCA) first ever online Film Production diploma. The first class of PNCA’s film production diploma graduated earlier this year, and currently, the second batch of this online diploma is taking place. Peter teaches the cinematography class as part of this diploma.
In conversation with Peter, I learnt of his deep connection to Afghanistan, which brought him back to work in this region year after year, and that is how he found his way to Pakistan:
Afghan children on their way to school
“It all started in the spring of 2001, before 9/11, when I went to the border of Pakistan to photograph the Afghan refugees. I was already taking photographs of refugees all over the world, in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Africa, Southeast Asia but then I began to really get interested in the Afghan refugee crisis. In the same year, I was thrilled to be able to go to the Taliban controlled Afghanistan with the International Rescue Committee, and I got the opportunity to take photographs of Afghanistan and its people. Then 9/11 happened, and it really changed the course of my life. I wanted to really go back and spend more time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to learn more about those cultures. So, I ended up working a few months every year for the next 20 years, primarily in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan.
Film poster of Peter Bussian's Opium War
The film Opium War was produced by Peter Bussian and directed by Afghan director Siddique Barmak, who is known for his Golden Globe film Osama. Peter also plays the lead role of a typical racist white colonel in the movie. The story behind Opium War is about two American soldiers whose helicopter crashes in an Afghan desert. They meet a dysfunctional family of Afghan opium farmers, a Sufi farmer with one leg, his three wives and his several children that live in a compound, underneath an old tank. The American soldiers end up becoming friends with the opium farmer and his children, and help them in harvesting the fields. Towards the end of the film, the initially racist colonel evolves into a more humane person, and just when the relationships become warm and friendly, an American helicopter arrives. The two American soldiers clamber into the helicopter and take off, leaving behind their Afghan friends in the poppy fields where they had initially landed. The last scene is uncannily symbolic of how the Americans abandoned the Afghans to their fate, after two decades of war and occupation of that country. Peter now runs a private Afghan support group on WhatsApp, and helps Afghan families in distress.
An Afghan refugee in a refugee camp
Peter met the former head of PNCA, Jamal Shah, in the Islamabad Arts Festival 2019, who asked Peter to teach a film course for PNCA, and that is how Peter’s journey of teaching started. Peter finds teaching Pakistani students a very rewarding experience.
“I felt like I had hit the cream of the crop with the students at PNCA, who are motivated and innovative, with great stories to tell. If I told some of these stories to people outside Pakistan, they would be surprised at the relevance of these stories to the world, and not just Pakistan. There has been a lot of negative propaganda against Pakistan in the West. But for me, culturally and economically, Pakistan has the most potential out of all of the countries that I’ve worked in.”
An Afghan man in Budghis, Afghanistan
Peter shared his thoughts on Pakistan’s struggling film industry, saying that Pakistan seems to be undergoing an artistic renaissance, and that it will need to define its own style in cinema over time. According to Peter, just as many cultures are known for their own unique style of cinema, such as Iranian, Russian and European, Pakistan too should develop its own unique style.
Peter emphasized that nothing has more impact than mass media in the modern world, and that Pakistan’s narrative needs to change, and the only way to do it is to create and show real life stories of Pakistani people.
An Afghan woman with her child in Herat, Afghanistan
Currently, Peter is working on another script of a story between the forbidden love of an Afghan woman and an American man with a tragic ending, as well as on a romance set in New York.
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