When I got a chance to visit the Kara Film festival earlier this week, I was quite chuffed. Who wouldn’t be ??? Being the Karachi nut I am , a film festival with international recognition and 230 flicks being staged in my own city of residence hit all the right notes in me.
Until i got there that is. I went for the afternoon show at 3pm on the 11th and well I was quite shocked. The two docudramas on display were
a) Foreign language movies with subtitles
b) Utterly boring
c) Made with the insight of a 12 year old.
The facilities were amazing though even though the person in control of the air conditioning seemed a bit trigger happy that day, everything was clean and well organized. The attendance I am sorry to say was non existent, there were about 20-30 people watching the two movies I sat through. With a capacity of easily over 500 in that theater, the whole experience left me just a but pissed, very disappointed and wondering as to what all the fuss has been about over the years?
Perhaps the organizers need to watch all the films before they put them up for public viewing, I mean the population should have some connection to the subject shown, or even a remote possibility of interest in it? Cultural moral or otherwise. Or perhaps the lack of interest was because the Indians pulled out at the last minute. In either case the promised rdx blast full on indie experience turned out to be a fizzled out phuljari. Hayeee satrangi re and whatever. I think the koolest thing about the whole festival was the rickshaw poster…thats bout it.
Faisal, Kara’s not that bad. I actually have really enjoyed my experience…
I enjoyed Kara. It’s actually good that something like this is taking place in our war-torn city.
I do agree on the fact that events like this are a blessing but my experience was excatly as I said , I’m glad you had a better one yawar
plus the documentaries and short stories kicked ass! had you managed to catch any of the Q&A sessions you would have realised that with a public this dumb putting in movies to match their intellect would have led to bullshit indian movies being plyed.
i mean i saw three documentaries by pakistanis on pakistan – and the audience’s response in the questions was insecure, bitter and vindictive, everyone missing out on how awesome the three docus were.
should have visited more of it…