The trend witnessed since the 1980s, as cinemas lost their audiences, has begun to be reversed. This is welcome news. Restrictions on which movies could be aired during the Zia years, coinciding with the arrival of VCRs and video tapes, had been a key factor in this. The decline of the Pakistani film industry added to the issues faced by cinema owners, with dozens simply closing down or being converted into giant shopping plazas in a new age of consumerism. Many who grew up through the 1980s have never known the pleasures of the cinema, with its whirring reels of film or the vendors walking along the aisles to sell items ranging from hard-boiled eggs to candy floss.
The plush cineplexes, now running in most major cities, were the first to bring the magic of the big screen back. But it is a fact that they cater only to the elite, with their expensive tickets and luxury trappings. It is important this world of entertainment be made available to a wider audience everywhere. The planned reopening of the Al-Falah helps set this pattern in motion; perhaps others among Lahore’s better known cinemas will follow and bring back a part of the past to a city that had lost it for too long, and by doing so revive a part of heritage that was snatched away, narrowing avenues of entertainment open to people still further. The signs of change in this oppressive environment are to be celebrated.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 26th, 2011.
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