Who do we allow in the 'shaadi theater' during Karachi's Decemberistan?
An artist falls in love with her couch, cannot marry it. This is the central story of Zahra Mansoor's silent short film, Doomed Love Trope, a satirical take on longing, heteronormativity, and the rigidness of wedding culture in Pakistan.
Zahra is a Karachi artist who has been working out of her art studio a little north of Paris for the past year and a half. She is currently working on a wedding-related project with filmmaker Juliet Lazek entitled "Shy Bride Video Services". Juliet also served as the main camerawoman and co-DOP on Doomed Love Trope.
Zahra's paintings are currently exhibited at the Sanat Initiative, curated by Noor Ahmed, titled Fanaa is the Eclipse, which began on January 13, lasting till January 15. The short film screened at Cinema 73 on Wednesday is an extension of her artistic practice, experimenting with notions of public and private performances. It was followed by a group discussion on the ongoing wedding season. Cinema 73, located in Seaview Apartments, is a space for having conversations about socio-political contexts on the street, where people can use the platform to articulate their ideas openly.
"The sofa is a metaphor. It's called 'Doomed Love Trope' because when I was researching, I kept seeing subjects who fell in love but couldn't be together. But it's also something I wanted to do because I always had people pose on that couch for my work. It's in the centre of my studio, and after a while of drawing it over and over with different subjects, I didn't know if the people were the muse or the couch itself. It kind of became a running joke. I wanted to centre the story on it," says Zahra.
Photo: Cinema 73
The film marks all the progressions in a tragedy; falling in love, voicing it despite not having the space to, ultimately leading to a marriage that is threatened by external forces. There is a scene where Zahra, as the actor, becomes the groom with the sofa as the bride, sits down to sign the nikahnaama with 4 femme-appearing people with badly drawn moustaches standing in as witnesses. There is an almost-genuine heartbreak to it despite wanting to laugh at the actor's crestfallen look when the officiant decides the marriage cannot happen as the sofa cannot sign.
It's absurd, whimsical, doesn't take itself too seriously while being critical of how love and affection in desi society are incredibly private, and that too being a privilege. When expressed more openly in society, it is discouraged and often rejected.
This is what weddings are a symptom of. They have become our source of community and recreation in a broken, ailing city where shopping malls take precedence over parks amid the ever-growing class divide. The cost is that it coerces us into a space where it's normalised to only care about people we are related to, our family, and perhaps, through extension, some close friends. Because it's the only place where people care enough to gather, where they can openly express joy safely, such as through singing and dancing.
And then there is the actual cost of the wedding itself, the sheer contrast of walking into a heavily decorated wedding hall wearing a Zara Shahjahan dress, through a street with barely functioning streetlights and potholes. Many signs point to the chasmic income gap in the city, and this is one of them.
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Cinema 73 founder Asad Kamran, a multi-disciplinary artist, architect working between Karachi and Montreal, hosted this film screening in order to have a conversation about Decemberistan, or the wedding season in Karachi, steeped in opulence and family politics, and the way it becomes less about the people getting married and more about the structures we're surrounded by. The values it imposes on people who may not be able to afford lavish weddings, but still attempt to do so, not to be seen as less caring or without status.
Photo: Cinema 73
The film relied heavily on nostalgia, backed by vintage desi instrumentals, and soft-focused footage in line with old Bollywood movies from the 70s. The second half of it could pass as a rebooted music video of Mehdi Hassan's Mujhe Tum Nazar se Gira to Rahe Ho, the song and the velvet quality of the footage setting the mood without the need for dialogue. It was a homage as well as a critique of borrowing from the past without paying attention to it.
The discussants, Zahra, Asad, and Juliet, talked about wedding decor in recent years, rehashing retro aesthetics over and over, glorifying the 70s and 80s without learning from them, or the values people used to embody of kinship over the grotesque displays of wealth, and guest lists curated with utter scrutinty of who gets invited, who gets to be seen with everyone else.
The discussion wrapped up on that note, leading to a tabla recital led by Waqas Gulab, fairylights glowing in the steadily creeping fog, the occasional car or bike passing by, blurring the public and the private with some unease that comes with being an indie cinema located inside a gated community.