yoyo
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the film was shown at fiLUMS recently, heres a review from lahore blogs.
As the title of this post suggests "don't eat "Luddoos", SPECIALLY from any "khokha" during a long drive, you must have been surprised that where these Luddoos came from? Actually, its all about Zibahkhana. Yes, finally I made it to FiLUMS festival's third and last day. They said it will start at SHARP 7:30 PM, but it took a little while to get seated "on stairs" and it started around 8 o'clock. Expectedly, there was a huge crowd, mostly were the students, and I saw a very few outsiders there. First, Shanu Taxi was played on, it was a short film by Vasant, a director from India. Shanu Taxi was about 15-20 minutes' duration and was based on a random thought about a twist in a taxi driver's life after receiving a gift of mobile as a reward of his honesty, no doubt it was a thought-provoking piece of celluloid, and after that came Zibahkhana.
Before getting started, the enthusiastic Omer Ali Khan, writer and director of the movie, told about the movie itself, it was a fun-wrapped speech and everybody was quite amused. Zibahkhana was almost around 1-1:30 hour in duration. The story goes around 5 college chicks, who secretly planned for a long drive for some thrill and left their homes telling a different story to their parents, AND it all started happening after they stopped by first "khokha" and had tea and Luddoos and soon after that they had first attack by a Zombie, and afterwards they got lost in the jungle and then the story goes on.
Most interesting part was that all 3-4 major characters were students, who were enjoying the movie with us and whole crowd applauded on every commendable scene, so they were getting direct response, though most of the time the reaction of crowd was fun driven. Technically a sound movie and various small details were addressed, but some scenes had less clarity as to what exactly happened. The cinematography was perfect and the performance was great, new talent was very confident.
Most importantly, the stuff I liked about this local director's flick was that, that its purely based on Pakistani Culture, there were glimpses of Maula Jutt, dhamal beat as the dominant background music, usage of "shuttlecock burqa" as mask or cover, even Luddoo. Yes, the story was predictable, but original locations and related Pakistani props gave it a reality-based genuine touch. It was fun watching first Pakistani horror movie, no doubt we were laughing most of the times, but there was really some ruthless killing in it, with blood all over the place and eyeballs in a jar (yuk).
Bravo to LMA for organizing such an event and providing us some visual treats. We should look forward to next FiLUMS with new arrivals including ....Gaamaa, Phajja and Pappu :p
yoyo
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instep profile
Horror according to the ice candy man
Omar Ali Khan came into the spotlight as the man who gave Islamabad its first cool hangout The Hotspot. Now, he's given Isloo it's first slash fest!
By Maria Tirmizi
I hadn't met Omar Ali Khan before, the owner of Islamabad's favourite ice cream hangout, Hotspot, and director of the country's first internationally distributed horror teen flick, Zibahkhana. So expecting to meet some slick director with dark shades and sleek, gelled back hair, probably chewing gum and dangling car keys in one hand while gushing about his new film, I entered Hotspot. What I got instead was someone standing behind the counter himself, with salt-and-pepper hair and intelligent, tired eyes that seemed seriously perturbed over the various dichotomies and hypocrisies prevalent in our society.
Without wasting any time, he emphatically drove home the point: "Let there be no mistake. Zibahkhana is a scuzzy, rough edged, cheesy little horror film. I call it a midnight movie. If people are expecting the slickness of something like Krrish (a Bollywood blockbuster) or the profundity of some documentary from Iran, they're going to be flabbergasted."
Watching the trailer of the film on YouTube, I felt he was being much too humble. There's no denying the fact that it is a movie that follows the typical format of the horror film genre (wild teens misbehave and get nastily slashed for it), but for those of us whose experience with Pakistani films revolves around a senior citizen with a jet black wig holding a bamboo stick complacently while a bulky lady dances the very earth off from under him, Zibahkhana is not just a 'cheesy little horror movie'.
t's a cheesy little horror movie that gives us hope.
It promises better times to those who've been seated on the sidelines for far too long, watching droplets of contaminated water being trickled on a withering, dying plant that is our film industry.
Shocked and excited about a horror film, a very contemporary one at that, coming out of a country most famous for its regular, eager appearance in the 'Terror Watch' segment of their evening news, the audience at the Natfilm Festival in Copenhagen and Philadelphia Film Festival responded just the way Omar hoped.
"We've had a very positive reception. They laughed at the right stuff, squirmed at the right stuff. There were a few ovations. Pakistanis were pleased. The elderly ones were especially complementary. They enjoyed songs of Madam Noor Jahan from the 70s. We even bought the rights to use the songs from an elderly gentleman, shocking the spectacles off his nose for doing that."
The film received interest from Sundance Film Festival as well, but was months too late to apply. It will be viewed in around 10 to 20 festivals, including some in July in Switzerland and Montreal.
"People abroad are always looking for something new. They get excited about Korean horror films one year, and it's something else the next year. Simply because Zibahkhana was a horror film from Pakistan, they were intrigued," said Omar.
The trailer of the film is eerie and fascinating. It starts off with a bunch of believable looking urban teens on their way to a rock concert in an interesting little van painted with images of our quintessential Lollywood heroine. Along comes a psychedelic old man prophesizing 'a hideous death', a hag promising to rip the very flesh off their bones and zombies, including one midget, in shalwar kameezes up to some nasty stuff not meant for the eyes of the squeamish, and you get "Pakistan's first extreme horror movie". Not to forget the buzz generated around a zombie in a burqa!
"There's nothing political about that," he insists. "It's just that I've seen many things in Pakistan, but the sight of a burqa just terrifies me. It's a childhood thing."
Probing him further on the 'burqa monster', he responds with a smile, "Let's just say, weird things happen. Things are revealed that are bizarre and extreme."
Omar Khan calls himself a student of classic horror films. He grew up consuming EC comic books (Entertaining Comics) that specialized in horror and crime fiction and were so shocking that they had to be banned, along with Hammer films ( that include The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula) and Lollywood films of Zeba and Muhammad Ali.
"I'm not ashamed to admit I grew up watching Lollywood films. I used to stick up for them, whatever they were like. But the films that come out now, we just can't identify with them. No disrespect to Javed Sheikh, but his work is based on trying to achieve the gloss and excellence of Bollywood. I'm sorry but we can't keep imitating Bollywood. Our strength lies in following our own instincts. Even a film like Maula Jut with all its crudeness is more Pakistani than something like Yeh Dil Aap Ka Hua. One represents the soil and nuances of Pakistan, the other is an insipid, beautiful copycat," he says.
He regrets the fact that in Pakistan, people have grown up on a diet of big budget Bollywood and Hollywood films, and don't have a tradition for cult films.
"You get mainstream, great looking horror films. The Hills Have Eyes for example. That's worth a million dollars. I wish we had that kind of money but we don't."
"I was honored to be one of the jury members at the Kara Film Festival in 2003 and I got a taste of what people are enjoying. They watch something like Armageddon or 300 and are like "wow, what a movie". True, they're visually stunning because of their massive budgets, but at the same time, someone like David Lynch, with limited resources and a brilliant mind, is an unknown entity to these people. People will aspire to slickness rather than the creativity that comes out of being bound by budget constraints."
When the script of Zibahkhana was initially written around five years ago, the purpose was to make something extremely over-the-top and wacky with about as much subtlety as a Pushto film. But then Omar started writing the sequel to Zinda Lash or The Living Corpse (a 1967 Pakistani Dracula movie) which somehow turned into Zibahkhana. He is extremely proud of the fact that the cast and crew are all Pakistanis and it has been made entirely in Pakistan in an area near Rawal Lake next to the Naval Club in Islamabad.
"When I first saw the location, I thought, this is it. It looked good and it was near our homes too. And then the police showed up, asking us to get out of there. I asked them why, since I didn't see any signs reading 'stay out'. And the police responded that a lot of dead bodies get dumped in the area." Just the right touch of authentic creepiness.
Luckily, they got permission from the police commissioner to use the area and with extreme duress of budget and time, heatstroke and nastiness of the month of June, along with cockroaches and the appearance of a couple of cobras, shooting for Zibahkhana began. He recalls the experience in extreme words: "Miserable and awful."
"But working with the cast was an absolute pleasure. The kids are free-thinking, spirited, politically astute individuals from Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The crew was also interesting. For the first time I witnessed the famous Lahore-Karachi divide among the crew members with their preconceived notions and generalizations."
Staying away from the typical hairy-faced fang monsters, the film introduces a new kind of monster with the help of the stunt double of Sultan Rahi, Sultan Billa, on whose appearance the audience in the festivals broke into applause.
Omar apprehends that some people might call the film a rip-off. "Well, it's so easy to criticize but I'm certainly not reinventing the wheel. This is just a fun, jaunty, midnight movie that follows the typical underlying morality of horror films, which is, if you misbehave, you'll be punished."
But Zibahkhana is more than just a mindless slaughter film. There are various interesting references, from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Psycho and Evil Dead to Adnan Sami Khan. Yes, Adnan Sami Khan.
"It's a love letter to all those great, zero budget horror films we grew up watching and loving," says Omar.
Some serious undercurrents are also palpable throughout the film. Characters depict a certain dichotomy in their personalities that a lot of us experience living in this society. One character highlights our ignorance in treating certain segments of the society as 'untouchables', something the foreign audience didn't pick up on. A scene of a protest rally staged against contaminated water forms a decisive part of the film.
"I'd like to say the political awareness in this film, though not very overt, is certainly tangible," he says.
All this talk stimulates the right amount of goosebumps for sure, but will we get to watch it on our big screens? With its mild curse words and some scenes with drug usage, will it pass the censor board? Has it even been sent to the censor board?
Till now, it hasn't, nor are there any plans at the moment to send it to the board.
"There is so much red tapism involved. You have to sweat and run around dealing with people you don't even want to."
"But if the censor board rejects it, I could take my lawyer with me and show them some of the films that they have passed, like the Pushto film Kacha Ghotay which is obscene to say the least. I am stunned to see the films they've passed. I even put up a clipping of one film passed by the censor board on You Tube, and it was pulled off within days for being offensive."
"As far as I feel, a film should not be anti-state or anti-Islamic. Anything else should go. I really don't know whose sitting on the censor board and I have no disrespect for anyone nor have I tried to antagonize anyone. We're living in a world scenario where you can't even afford to be controversial with vigilante burqa clad women just around the corner. But I do have one thing to say: Please grow up and get a grip. Let adults be treated as adults. Let's give our movies some soul. We can't watch 'rich boy- poor girl' love stories anymore. We need to show the audience something other than Jut in Lahore and Vehshi Haseena. People who want to watch these films, let them watch them. But we need to broaden our horizons. We need people like Saqib Malik on the censor board, people who know about films and have their livelihood depending on films."
For now, there is no plan of screening the film in Pakistan. He wishes a private TV channel would buy its rights and bleep out some words if it has to.
"It's not like I'm going to become a millionaire. This film has cost me an arm and a leg, but if I'm going to make another film, I need to at least recover the money."
If no one buys it, he will let a British DVD label release it. Even then, issues of piracy haunt him.
"What will I do if the movie is pirated and cable operators start showing it here everyday. Let's face it, piracy is officially protected here. It's not like we go to some shady little alley from a backdoor to buy pirated DVDs. We go to major, flourishing, event-sponsoring, double-storied, air conditioned shops. Who's protecting piracy?"
He is also expecting some people to complain that 2007 is a 'Visit Pakistan' year and that he hasn't projected Pakistan in the most positive light.
"My response to such people is, look around; there is ugliness all around you. You have people selling kidneys on the street for God's sake. Grow up and tackle all sorts of issues."
"There's an interesting scene in the movie that we shot near Nallah Leh in Rawalpindi where you can see the greenish-blue water of the nallah and literally a foliage of paper on the surface of it. People outside Pakistan asked me, 'how did you stage the pollution shot?' It was funny. I could only wish I had staged it."
He hopes this movie will encourage young fresh blood to get off their backs and stop playing safe.
"We've noticed theatre blossoming in Islamabad and it's a very positive feature, an avenue for kids to express themselves. I really wish these people would develop a sense of self-worth and value to trust their own ability and gradually move away from adaptations and regurgitating musicals. The ultimate aim should be to write something yourself."
The opening of multiplexes by the government in Karachi and one in Rawalpindi is seen as a positive and encouraging sign by him, but he wishes that at least one screen would be reserved for local films; otherwise, these multiplexes would be useless to our industry.
He's going to start work on the sequel to Zibahkhana soon, and keeping in mind the previous experience, it won't be shot in July.
"We've learnt so much and won't be making the same mistakes again. My message to kids learning courses in film-making is this: there is no substitute for going out there and shooting. Nothing prepares you for the real thing. This was the biggest crash course of my life."
The walls of Omar Khan's ice cream shop The Hot Spot are framed with posters of Alfred Hitchcock's horror movies and painted with desi monsters, along with a few additions of Zibahkhana's zombies. It makes one realize that he has genuine love and passion for this particular genre. This film is something he feels he just had to do and was long overdue. We hope and anticipate that Zibahkhana gets its due encouragement to become the first in a long line of horror films, cheesy r not, to give us frightful midnights in our own endearing, direly needed, desi flavour.
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/may2007-weekly/nos-13-05-2007/ins tep/mainissue.htm
yoyo
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7572 days old here
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FILM PREMIERE
Zibahkhana brings the house down at LUMS
Sehrish Khan
Lahore
Picture this: People of different ages, students from different universities, a hint of musicians and models – huddled and crowded together as one, outside one of LUMS' auditorium doors.
Only two auditoriums were showing Zibahkhana - Hell's Ground but due to the massive popularity, hype and demand surrounding Zibahkhana - a contemporary horror movie of Pakistan with its first ever viewing on its soil – hoards of people were lined up outside already-packed auditoriums trying to get seats for themselves. The FILUMS committee (at LUMS) dexterously announced (just in time) that three additional auditoriums were also showcasing the movie! So four auditoriums around LUMS were jam-packed with girls and boys waiting in curiosity, wondering what kind of a horror movie Omer Ali Khan (the man behind Hot Spot) had in store for them.
Clad in a white crisp buttoned down shirt, with a pair of evening wear blue jeans and a casually accessorized belt – Omer Khan said: "For me, this is a dream come true, it's one of my ambitions and passions that I've worshipped my entire life," he stated before playing the film in the auditorium. "Some of you will absolutely love it and some of you will hate it. It's an extremely low budget film," said Omer Khan before proceeding, "I'm too old to consider myself as the new wave of film professionals so I wouldn't say that about myself. This movie is all about entertaining! If you understand or feel even one iota of my passion and love for horror movies through Zibahkhana – I consider my mission accomplished!"
The movie started with Adnan Malik driving the car towards Janat Pur and mysteriously getting murdered by some unknown monster on the way. The next scene led to model, Rubya Chaudhary (who plays the character Roxy), sprawling out of bed – her character coming to life as that of a spoilt rich girl. The excruciatingly dashing lad, Osman Butt (aka the Orlando Bloom of Islamabad), played the character of OJ whose main mission in life was to smoke up and get high. Haider Shah, a local lad from LUMS plays the character of Simon, a shy fellow whose family is not as well-off in comparison to his friends and has to deal with a verbally abusive father, but whose mother, however, loves and adores him.
Kunwar Roshan plays the character of Vicky who throughout the movie, is the friend who gets the van and is the designated driver for the road trip. Last but not the least, Roshani Ijaz plays the character of Ayesha, a 'good' girl who lies to her mother for the first time in her life, in order to sneak out to the road trip these five friends have planned. Little did they know that they'll come face to face with Hell's Ground on the way!
The script was hilarious to the point that most of the times the audience would let out a roar of laughter. The characters of Zibahkhana depicted realistic, believable, everyday people and the roles gave a natural backdrop to the story. The actors were also very easy with delivering their dialogues. The camera shots too were done really well, in a very 'old school' manner.
Although Omer Khan said that there was nothing politically or socially driven about the movie, that it was all fun; it does manage to touch a lot of controversial aspects of our society. The one thing that was clear during the FILUMS screening of Zibakhana was that the audience were glued to their seats!
Omer Khan has been attending various film festivals showcasing Zibahkhana (Copenhagen and Philadelphia to name two) and started writing Zibahkhana two and a half years ago. Talking to Instep Today, Omer stated that his sequel to Zibakhana is going to be a film called Zinda Laash – whose actors he chose by having auditions in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad.
Instep Today got a chance to talk to the actors of the film. Osman Butt said the actual shooting took around four weeks at Rawal Lake, where scary instances did occur while the shooting of the movie; Roshani Ijaz, while running in a shot was told not to stop the car or get outside. She claims she was told and everybody knew that a little boy was running along side and was actually a ghost! Yikes! That is truly freaky! Rubya Chaudhry added, "After we left the shoot location, an actual dead body was found in that area!"
During the first week of July, Omer will be screening Zibahkhana at the New York Film Festival in Manhattan. "My parents are to blame! My father's been a Hitchcock fanatic since forever, when I was little used to watch The Birds or Psycho – so I was bitten by the horror bug by a very young age!" Omer grinned.
Zibakhana's screening at LUMS went extremely well. Other colleges should put up similar screening events for the youngsters of the city, to support talent in whatever and whichever way possible.
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/instep_today.asp
seen the promo well good try, movie looks good 
