Zinda Bhaag (movie)
A
screening of ‘Zinda Bhaag’, a 2013 Punjabi-with-English-subtitles feature film
out of Pakistan, took place at CineArts Theater in Palo Alto, on November
15. The show was a part of Third I’s Twelfth
South Asian Film Festival. The annual
festival normally takes place in San Francisco; this year a Palo Alto venue was
added to woo South Asian crowd living in the South Bay. At the CineArts Theater Zinda Bhaag was introduced
by Third I’s Saqib Mausoof (director of ‘Kala Pul’ and ‘In Search of Meluhha’).
Set
in a working class neighborhood of Lahore—Samanabad, to be accurate—Zinda Bhaag
is the story of three marginally educated young men— Khaldi played by Khurram
Patras, Chitta played by Salman Ahmad Khan, and Taambi played by Zohaib
Asghar--in their twenties looking for ways to get out of the country. Spirited Rubina (played by Amna Ilyas), Khaldi’s
lover, is an entrepreneur determined to stay in Lahore selling her organic
‘Face Look’ beauty soap. Besides the
main theme of three young men’s desire to migrate to the greener pastures in
Europe, Zinda Bhaag touches upon a number of Pakistani oddities: poems of
Marxist poets are only appreciated by the privileged class; Islamic Republic of
Pakistan provides ample opportunities for making out, tippling, and gambling;
and that in official business and in romance Punjabis prefer using Urdu. Zinda Bhaag, dotted with upbeat songs shot
against garish backgrounds, beautifully captures the comedic conversational
style that is the hallmark of the Punjabi language. On a budget-to-entertainment-value-scale
Zinda Bhaag ranks very high.
Any
movie coming out of Pakistan is expected to feature elements international
audience associates Pakistan with: terrorism, suicide bombings, lynch mobs chasing
perceived heretics, madrassas preaching extremism, Taliban, and the War on
Terror. In order to keep it light, Zinda
Bhaag’s filmmakers have stayed away from these uncomfortable topics—Zinda Bhaag
is a pun on Zinda-bad, a common South Asian chant of encouragement and well wishes. But then doesn’t this deliberate avoidance of
the Pakistani realities nullifies the title of the film? In the movie, if people staying in Pakistan are living well
(save for some financial hardship, common everywhere in the world), and the
ones who try to run away to other countries are being killed, then instead of
‘Zinda Bhaag’ (Run Away Alive), shouldn’t the film be tilted differently to
correctly portray the contrary theme of the movie?
The
Twelfth South Asian Film Festival was supported by a large number of sponsors
including The Center for South Asia, Stanford, and the Pakistani American Culture
Center (PACC). The screening was
followed by a Q&A session with Meenu Gaur and Farjad Nabi—the two were
introduced by Dr. Sangeeta Mediratta, the Associate Director of the Center for
South Asia. The filmmakers explained how
they succeeded in recruiting superstar Naseeruddin Shah to act in his first
Punjabi film and how most of the actors in Zinda Bhaag were common people chosen
from the locality the film was shot in.
فلم زندہ بھاگ، تھرڈ آءی، ساءوتھ ایشیا فلم فیسٹیول، سمن آباد، لاہور، خالدی، خرم پطرس، چٹا، سلمان احمد خان، تامبی، زوہیب اصغر، روبینہ، آمنہ الیاس، نصیرالدین شاہ، فلمکار،مینو گور، فرجاد نبی، سینٹر فار ساءوتھ ایشیا، اسٹینفرڈ، سنگیتا میدیرتا، ثاقب موصوف، پنجابی فلم، پاکستانی فلم، آسکر ایوارڈ۔
