Adil Najam
Canadian newspaper Toronto Star recently named its list of “10 to Watch in 2007.” Ten people living in the Greater Toronto area who the newspaper thinks are “poised to make a splash in 2007.” On that list is a young Pakistani documentary film-maker: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.
I am particularly happy to report this news because I have been meaning to write about her work for a while, and this is the perfect reason to. In fact, she is an early friend of ATP and you may have seen her commenting here. But, it is more likely that you have seen her work on such award winning shows as PBS’s Frontline. And if you have not, I am betting you soon will.
Here is what the Toronto Star has to say about it:
In her short career, launched when she was still in university, Obaid-Chinoy has made 10 personal, passionate documentaries and won as many prizes. Now 28 and based in Toronto, she is making two more films in 2007, one on the lives of Afghan women five years after the U.S. invasion, and another on the legacy of Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe.
… Terror’s Children, [a documentary] about Afghan refugees living in her homeland, Pakistan, launched her career in 2002 and immediately won three awards. Her second, a searing look at the rise of fundamentalism in Pakistan, won four more prizes, including the Livingston Award for young journalists under 35. Obaid-Chinoy was the first non-American to receive it. Other winners in the category of international reporting include David Remnick, now editor of The New Yorker, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and Christiane Amanpour of CNN. Bill Abrams, former president of New York Times Television, says when he first encountered Obaid-Chinoy, then a college student, “I thought, this person could be the next Christiane Amanpour “sophisticated, smart, fearless.”
The list of her work, available on her website, is impressive indeed, and she has taken on some of the most pressing and important social issues to work on in her documentaries. The best exemplar of her work is the documentary ‘On A Razor’s Edge’ about the India-Pakistan peace process, shown on Frontline in 2004. The website about the documentary has an interview with her which shows her as a person of conviction as well as idealism. Both of those are endearing qualities in our world today. The write-up on the documentary, introduces Sharmeen and her work thus:
Spring has arrived in Pakistan, and the season has brought a thaw in the Cold War between Pakistan and India, bitter enemies for more than 50 years. A train is now allowed to cross the border. FRONTLINE/World correspondent Sharmeen Obaid boards this “peace train” in India and travels home to Pakistan to see how people are reacting to the cautious attempts to settle differences between the two countries. Born and raised in Pakistan, Obaid is now a graduate student at Stanford as well as a reporter for New York Times Television who has covered the dramatic political and social changes in Pakistan since 9/11 and the U.S. intervention in neighboring Afghanistan.
On the train Obaid meets a woman who is on her way to a reunion with her children and grandchildren in Pakistan. “I’ve prayed for the day the borders would open,” she tells Obaid. As the train pulls into the city of Lahore, Pakistan, Obaid witnesses the meaning of reconciliation as long-separated families and friends embrace each other. All this is possible because of a historic handshake between Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf and India’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who agreed to begin peace talks in January 2004. That night in Lahore, Obaid sees the start of Basant, a festival celebrating the advent of spring. Originally a Hindu holiday, Basant has long been embraced by Pakistan’s Muslim majority. It is a time of kite flying, dancing, even drinking. As she wanders the gaily-lit streets at night, Obaid speaks with Pakistanis who tell her they are hopeful about the possibility of a real peace with India. But there is also a note of caution. “Ask me another time,” an older street vendor tells her. “If this interview is aired, we will both be jailed. This is Pakistan!”
If you are like me you are already hooked and you want to read more about this. You can, here. If you do, you will read about her encounters with Jugnu Mohsin, Ahmed Rashin, Gen. Hamid Gul, Gen. Aslam Beg, and many more in the weeks and months when the A.Q. Khan case was blowing up all over the place.
Better still, you can watch the whole documentary here. Or just do a google and you can watch a lot more of her work. Do so, its worth watching.
Congratulations, Sharmeen. Like the Toronto Star, ATP will also be watching you in 2007 and beyond!
Pervaiz, I have read Bapsi Sidhwa’s works and also heard her speak. I certainly did not find her or her works to be against the idea of Pakistan. Like many others she has written about teh pangs of partition, which was a traumatic experince for those who lived through it. There aer also those who reject Manto or Faiz (for his subhe aazadi) for similar reasons. My feeling is that we can have a plurality of views and it is a good thing.
Personally, I think we are and have to be a wide enough and welcoming enough tent to ‘own’ not only Fred Bremner (BTW, that was wonderful) but also Bapsi Sidhwa and Sharmeen Obaid and Maluana Maudoodi and Abdus Salam and Asma Jehangir and everyone else. The exercise of picking and selecting who is a good enough to be a Pakistani, or a good enough to be a Muslim, is not something that I feel very comfortable with.
Saadia Khan: Yes, Ms. Bapsi Sidhwa left Pakistan to live in India and then emigrated to the USA. Please do not take me wrong. Every one is free to think and believe as they like. She is not comfortable with the idea of Pakistan so be it. Even though born and raised in a Parsi family from Lahore, for me because of her ideology, she does not represent Pakistan. Her novels are written with a certain ideological slant and are happyly bought by the Indian film makers to partly promote anti-Pakistan ideology. So what. I wish her and her backers good luck. We Pakistanis on our part just have to let her go. I rather own Mr. Fred Bremner than Ms. Bapsi Sidhwa.
Alvi Saheb, I doubt if she migrated to India, as far as I know she migrated to US. I do not care about Indian Media of Garam Masala, if I start relying on it then I have to consider many Pakistani musicians, singers, actors, writers and many more as non Pakistani talent.
Its rather appaling that people are being critical Sharmeens feats and feats of all the men/women from Pakistan who have the cahonyes to touch on taboo subjects. I guess a good number of people have put religion on a pedestal and made in untouchable for discussion. What folks like Sharmeen and Zarqa (her rather cliched series premiered yesterday) deserve credit for is breaking the untouchable barrier on these issues.
I have seen a few of Sharmeens films and attended a screening over a year ago in Toronto where presented a pretty decent argument about the women in saudi arabia. It may not have been exceptionaly objective but that was her finding and the decision to take something away from the movie is entirely upto the viewer.
So lets not wag the finger at these folks hope we get to see even more substantial/influential work from them in the days to come.
“I am much more impressed of the well-written work of Bapsi Sidhwa, another Pakistani talent whom very less Pakistans know, though much of them have for sure watched the Indian movie “Earth 1947″, which is actually based on her novel.”
Saadia Khan: I hope you do not get too “impressed” by Ms. Bapsi Sidhwa. There is a common thread here. Ms. Sidhwa does not buy the idea of Pakistan as a separate independent sovereign nation-state. That is why she left Pakistan and migrated to India. She has written fictions against the idea of the division of the British Indian Empire. That is her choice and we should respect it. We could also like or not like her as a writer. But we also know that she is a socio-political writer and as such a darling of the Indian media and we should leave it there. Don’t drag her back into the category of “Pakistani Talent”.
Samdani: Without getting into a silly debate with you or others, the source of funding does matter. If you watch carefully purses come attached with strings. Iqbal and Faiz are both great writers then why is it that one is more popular and even promoted in certain countries than other. Do you think that Nobel Prize in literature is given just because one is a great writer. If that was the case then both Iqbal and Faiz should have been at least considered for that distinction. But they are not. The war of ideologies is funded by the interest groups.