Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti (centre), General Manager of Katara Cultural Village; Shahzad Ahmad (left), Ambassador of Pakistan to Qatar; and Mohammed Assad Khan, Pakistani film director, during the press conference at Katara yesterday. Pic: Abdul Bas
DOHA: Katara Theatre, for the first time, will screen three Pakistani films in its drama theatre today, The Cultural Village Foundation (Katara) announced during a press conference yesterday.
The conference was addressed by Dr Khalid Al Sulaiti, General Manager of Katara Cultural Village; Shahzad Ahmad, Ambassador of Pakistan to Qatar, and Mohammed Assad Khan, Pakistani film director.
The Ambassador expressed his thanks to the Katara Cultural Village for hosting such an important event to the Pakistani culture and art. He added that this is a good stage of cultural cooperation and exchange and will deeply support the Pakistani film makers.
Talking to The Peninsula, Shahzad Ahmed said: “We are honoured to be given an opportunity to showcase our cinema in Qatar. We (Pakistani community ) are excited to host this event in presence of local audience and expatriates coming from different countries. The movies will start at 9am starting with the children’s animation “3 Bahadur” followed by “ChupanChupai” at 1pm and last screening at 5pm for the movie “Azad”. These movies will have subtitles in English to make it easier for the audience to understand the movie more.”
Speaking at the conference, Assad Khan, said: “There will be three movies on the show. First film (3 Bahadur) is animation film and it is aimed for children and family category. It tells a story from the Pakistani reality in a comedy and entertaining way.”
“The Second film is chupa chupai “Hide and Seek”, we call it masala film with some entertainment shows like songs and dances, and it is a light comedy. The third one ‘Aazad’ is intellectual film, dark comedy and we call it provoking film as it revolves around some social issues in Pakistan,” Khan continued.
Commenting on the new movies, Khan said that they reflect the cultural heritage of Pakistan and conveys a message of love and peace to the whole world. Moreover, Khan explained that the Pakistani cinema had suffered a lot and that the cinema industry still dealing with with its struggle in terms of financing and production. Despite that, Pakistani film makers are working within the limits of the resources and it is a great success that they came up with these three movies.
Khan assured that through this initiative by Katara Cultural Village, the Pakistani cinema will find new horizons to distribute and market its productions. “The purpose of this initiative is to open up a market for the Pakistani film in Doha so it generates revenue which will eventually boost the production”, Khan added.
Khan concluded that this initiative is a great honour and reflects the high values Katara is built upon, which is supporting culture and art not only in Qatar but around the world.
