Pakistani films harsh truths – The Asian Age
July 19, 2008
by Shagufta Kalim
Kolkata: Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, a documentary filmmaker from Pakistan, likes to travel the road not taken. And it has literally taken her to oil rich Saudi Arabia, war ravaged Afghanistan and the highways of Canada.
In her latest film Birth of a Nation, she explores the plight of the people of East Timor, five years after independence. It explores everything from activities of street gangs to how the United Nations is helping the country hold its Presidential elections.
“Anything can generate an idea for a film,” she says. ” A conversation with a friend or a newspaper report. I am keen on subjects that other people shy away from, the ones that can generate a debate.”
Her latest film on East Timor was shown on Channel 4 this week to rave reviews. But she is not resting on her laurels and has already started working on her next theme—Pakistan at cross roads.
“My country is at a critical juncture right now, and I am interested in exploring the role of religion and how it is shaping our identity in Pakistan,” she said.
Sharmeen has always been adventurous, so to say. She was the first girl in her affluent and conservative household to complete her graduation. Then she flew to the United States to study at Stanford University for her masters in International Policy Studies and Communication.
When she was 16, she was a reporter doing undercover stories on the sale of passports to illegal immigrants. “That landed me in a lot of trouble,” she recalls. Graffiti abusing her appeared on the walls of Karachi.
“I think it is our duty to challenge the status quo,” says Sharmeen. “I have a voice and I want to use it to bridge the gap between the east and the west. More importantly, I want to help my own country, which is going through troubled times.”
She started her career by working as a journalist for New York Times Television. It was while covering the plight of Afghani refugee children in Pakistan that she first thought of making a documentary film.
“Their situation was so dire, and their stories so compelling, that I decided to return to Pakistan and create a film about them,” she says. “Smith College and New York Times Television gave me funds.”
That was how Terror’s Children was born in 2003. Since then, Sharmeen has made 12 highly acclaimed documentaries. Her films were hard hitting and she was called Christine Amanpour of the east.
She trains her camera on stark and controversial realities. In Terror’s Children a boy in a pro-Taliban religious school looks gravely at her and tells her that those who believe in God must not watch TV. Women do not need an education and, he says pointedly, the filmmaker’s face should be covered with a veil.
“I particularly remember tracing the paths of illegal immigrants in the treacherous borders of South-Africa and Zimbabwe for The New Apartheid, a nerve-wracking experience,” says Sharmeen.
And the toughest assignment was the documentary on women in the highly segregated society of Saudi Arabia. But the 29-year-old filmmaker was able to capture the nascent women’s movement in Women in the Holy Kingdom.
The journey has been rewarding. Sharmeen is the first non-American journalist to be awarded the prestigious Livingston Award. Her film, Reinventing the Taliban, which explored the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan, got her the Special Jury Award at the BANFF TV festival in Canada and the American Women in Radio and Television award. The accolades continue to pour in.
“The two most difficult films for me were Afghanistan Unveiled and Cold Comfort,” she recalls. “I travelled across Afghanistan to see how the lives of women had changed in the last five years,” she says. “Their condition was pathetic. Hundreds of women were committing suicide by setting themselves ablaze to escape the horrors of forced marriage. The badly disfigured survivors talked to me.”