Is dancing a sin?

Illustration/Uday Mohite

India has got the label "anti-national", while Pakistan has got "blasphemy" (disrespect to God or religion). Both are all-purpose "brahmastras", commonly used like alu-tamatar, whenever anyone in power wants to get rid of someone asking inconvenient questions. So last week brought the thrilling news that Sarmad Sultan Khoosat's film Zindagi Tamasha (Circus of Life, in Punjabi and Urdu, a film that explores blasphemy), was selected as Pakistan's entry for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. Hats off to the Oscar selection committee for choosing this daring film that calls out many hypocrisies in Pakistani society. The film had already won the Kim Ji-seok Award at the Busan Film Festival in 2019. The committee included filmmakers Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Asim Abbasi (Churails), Maheen Zia and Hamza Bangash, among others. The film features Arif Hassan, the lovely Samiya Mumtaz, Eman Suleman and Ali Kureshi. It will be shown free online by the Engendered I View World film festival on December 20; and online by the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival in Canada, on December 12.

The film is about the middle-aged Muhammad Rahat Khwaja, a famous Naat Khwan (reciter of poems praising the Prophet), who is devoted to his sick wife, and one day happens to dance to an old Lollywood film song at a wedding. His life unravels after somebody films him and the video goes viral-his married daughter Sadaf is ashamed and refuses to talk to him, everyone treats him like a pariah, and the mullahs force him to make a counter-video apologising for his "indecent and vulgar actions". (Meanwhile in India, where Bollywood songs are inherited in our DNA, Dancing Uncle got 31 million hits on YouTube for his terrific shaadi-ka-naach-gaana). The film celebrates South Asia's passionate love of song and dance, especially old filmi gaane from Bollywood (Mumbai) and, in this case, Lollywood (Lahore). It also daringly calls out fundamentalists misusing religion and blasphemy laws to harass innocent people, as well as middle class hypocrisy. At the heart of the film is the question-s dancing a sin? If a man says namaz five times a day, why can't he also dance at a wedding, for god's sake? It also questions our ageist culture-a youngster dancing at a wedding is cool, but why denounce an older man doing the same?

The film, scheduled to release in January 2020, was cleared twice by the Senate and Censor Board, but following threats by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) political party, the censor board referred the film to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). Ulp!

Khoosat is among Pakistan's finest younger generation filmmakers; he directed the film Manto and the popular TV series Humsafar. His direction is confident and the film, well-crafted. In addition to exposing hypocrisies, he shows a range of LGBT people rarely seen in Pakistani feature films, including gays and trans people. When someone takes Khwaja to a gay club to meet "our kind" of guys, he is outraged and denounces the gays. Someone else yells, "Drag these filthy rats out," during a police raid on transgenders. I wish the film, that had so daringly taken on the mullahs, been more liberal towards sexual minorities, but in fact, the film has no heroes or villains, its characters are shaded with both. The film is backed by two courageous women-writer Nirmal Bano wrote this nuanced screenplay in what is probably her debut feature, and co-producer Kanwal Khoosat, also Sarmad's sister. Arif Hassan as Khwaja holds the film on his shoulders, ably supported by the ensemble cast. Khizer Idrees' cinematography is good, and the music by new band Saakin and Shamsher Rana is wonderful. The melancholic song Zindagi Tamasha Bani, composed and sung by Nimra Gilani, will linger long, see YouTube.

There has been a recent resurgence of internationally acclaimed, daring Pakistani content, including Asim Abbasi's web series Churails, Saim Sadiq's Darling (Best Short, Venice Film Festival), and Hamza Bangash's 1978 (Locarno Film Festival) and Iram Parveen Bilal's I'll Meet You There (South by Southwest Film Festival)-Zindagi Tamasha relays the torch forward.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com

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