Cinema redux

For Pakistan, multiplex & family-friendly films that are low on prurience but high in ability to put bottoms on seats.

One of the first things I did when visiting Pakistan in 1993 was go to the cinema. It was a time when vast painted hoardings adorned the front of cinemas across the land, and it was still possible for families to go and see a film in relative ease and comfort, without fear of harassment.

By 1995, the Missus and I began to notice a change. There were fewer cinemas. Audiences were more rowdy. Not so many families in attendance — and then it slid downhill fast. Films that were most definitely not family viewing became common, at a stroke excluding women either singly or together from cinema-going. Prostitution and the cinema joined hands, and the rise in the availability of cheap pornography in the VHS format altered expectations in terms of what the average customer, now almost exclusively male by the late ’90s, hoped to see on the silver screen.

The indigenous film industry went into steep decline — it had been ailing for years — and auditoria were going dark across the country to be replaced by the ubiquitous shopping malls and galloping consumerism overtook a segment of the entertainment industry. Then there was The Great Burning, the torching of cinemas in the spate of rioting that was orchestrated after a blasphemous clip was aired on YouTube and the cinema industry appeared to finally be in its death throes. Wrong again.

At the same time as the traditional cinema with a single screen was putting the last reels on the projector, there was a quickening of the new cinema, a tentative toe in the water of the multi-screen cinema that was linked to fast food outlets and was planted firmly at the ‘family’ end of the cinema market.

It was a gamble that could have so easily failed. The first multiplexes opening in Karachi and Rawalpindi were something of a leap in the dark for the entrepreneurs that put up the money to get them up and running. There was a sceptical press. Where would customers park? Who would go to late-evening screenings? Are people going to pay ticket prices that are five times what a traditional single-screen venue charged? Will women go?

After a slightly faltering start, the multiplex took off in Pakistan and today, if my recent visit to a state-of-the-art cinema in Karachi is anything to go by, the industry is on an uptick.

Go anywhere in the world and you will find dodgy cinemas, but they are in a minority. Cinemas globally are very much geared to the family market and screen a basket of films that are designed to impact across age and gender groups. The film-making companies are global franchises and have brought a not-always-welcome homogeneity to the hero and heroine roles — but no matter.

For Pakistan, the multiplex and family-friendly films that are low on prurience but high in their ability to put bottoms on seats, young and old, male and female, have been an essential shot in the arm.

The prices are higher but the experience when viewed in the round is consistently pleasant and speaks of the growth of a service culture that has a quality base, and where the customer really is the most important thing in the building.

Our vehicle was securely parked. We enjoyed some surprisingly good Chinese fast food before the main attraction. The seats were clean and the entire cinema completely litter free. Nobody shone a laser at the screen during the film, the 3D worked perfectly, the sound system was pin-sharp, people laughed and gasped in all the right places, and at the end, we exited, a muted excited chatter running around, with couples, women and children, and even groups of young men who had not disrupted nor harassed anybody, going happy into the night.

The venue was at about 50 per cent capacity, which for a midweek evening was probably not bad. I was told that weekends were regularly booked to capacity and I have no reason to doubt it. There was a mix of Urdu and English-language films, all mainstream and nothing to worry the censor. The cinema in Pakistan is alive and well. Repeat business? You betcha, three tickets, please.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2014.

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