Shahana Khan tells a ‘Story’ from behind the lens

Former Kuch Khaas director talks about her new venture and the need to keep producing films in Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD:

A new video that deals with the struggle between mortality and transience comes from ex-deputy director of Kuch Khaas and Slackistan team member, Shahana Khan. The YouTube video, titled “Story”, shares the fleeting beauty of Cape Town and of life.

Khan moved to Cape Town in February 2012 to pursue a diploma in Film and Television Production Techniques from the City Varsity School of Media and Creative Arts. While her video captures the beauty and culture of Cape Town poignantly, Khan says she could have filmed it in Pakistan just as well, as the concept of storytelling and leaving a personal, human imprint is universal. However, the public arts festival that was happening while she filmed helped her get interesting shots of performances and helped her capture the cultural richness of the city.

According to Khan, concrete art, like street graffiti, buildings and roads, are juxtaposed with the fluid and intangible movements of an aerial silk dancer, signifying the duality of what qualifies as art, long lasting labours, or flitting beauty. The video celebrates the art in all things human, which is the great refuge and liberation of the human condition, says Khan.

As with all art, her video is an attempt to cement one’s own life in the face of the unflinching Father Time. It starts with a culturally directed discourse of what civilisations leave behind. To quote it, “This is our time. People will look at videos of this time and wonder about how we lived, who we were, and what life was like ‘back then’.” However, the inner turmoil soon shifts to Khan’s own persona, as her image enters into the shots and she asks herself: “When will I stop mattering to people? How many years after I leave this place? Will I leave an eternal legacy? Can there truly be one?”

Answering the complexities of eternal legacies, if such a thing is even possible, Khan commented: “I think that remains unanswered. You’d have to look at the past. We’ve got the likes of Shakespeare. One can only hope that what we, as humans, honestly express, create, and impart from the core of our nature, which, for the right reasons, does actually go on forever.”

With the ubiquity of technology and social media, trying to leave a legacy behind has become easier for aspiring artists, but has also created avenues for sub-standard ‘art’ as well. Khan hopes that the internet filtering process takes care of true labours of love getting their due attention. “At this point, especially in Pakistan, I feel like we need to keep producing. It will become obvious after a while as to who is doing it and for what reasons,” she said. She noted that access to the internet and social media allow premature artists to let themselves loose, which gives them an opportunity to get feedback and hone their craft.

She thinks individuals should focus on whatever they are naturally blessed with. “What needs to be done is to just express and create. Sing, dance, write, whatever, but do it because you don’t know how else to be,” Khan said assuredly.

For Khan, her driving force to create without fear of the consequent product is inspired by an Urdu verse she read while in school, in which a poet described being in his grave and being asked what he had done with all the talent he had been given in his lifetime which he had wasted, a question that the poet feared. “I don’t want to be that person,” said Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 6^th, 2012.