Love, War, and Other Longings: Essays on Cinema in Pakistan

by Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar (Editor), Asad Ali (Editor)

Has there been a 'revival' of Pakistani cinema? Or can the very question be put to scrutiny? Can we think beyond a national cinema, and instead simply think with films to explore the fraught politics and aspirations of our times? Love, War & Other Longings brings together historians, anthropologists, artists, and film-makers to offer new lines of enquiry that probe the tensions between cinema's past and present, absences and the archive, seduction and respectability, class and consumption, as well as genre and censorship. At times experimental in form, the essays seek to draw readers into conversations that engage political theory and postcolonial history, and become part of ongoing writing, thinking, and the making of films in Pakistan and the global south more broadly.

Genres: Pakistan

274 pages, Paperback

First published December 29, 2020

Reviews

[mio · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book has done unimaginable damage to my watchlist. very good and thought provoking

[Amal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fun and is lovely to look at and hold. I'm so happy to have read Ek Haseen Archive and seen those photographs. There is so much tension in the Manto section. Would recommend, there are some solid essays in here.

[Saadullah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A must-read from this collection is Ayesha Jalal's searing takedown of Sarmad Khoosat's Manto, exposing a seldom-analysed gulf between creative artists and social scientists in Pakistan, and - in a way - zeroing in on the obnoxious storytelling choices symptomatic of this gulf.