The filmy rise and fall of Lahore’s Bari Studios – Prism

Off Multan Road in Lahore is a fascinating piece of celluloid history that wobbles slowly.

Built in the early 1950s by producer Malik Bari, Bari Studios was where a great Lollywood movie was filmed. The studio housed multiple rooms, study rooms, movie sets, a laboratory and all the necessary equipment for filming and postproduction. Today, its walls are falling apart. But as they are, they are also telling stories of a heyday that is hard to remember without melancholy nostalgia.

Malik Akbar is one of those bastions of nostalgia. By identifying himself as an "additional supplier," Akbar wastes no time in reaching his sales pitch. It tells us that you can organize any additional or background actor necessary for a movie, from eight to 80 years old, any body type, male or female.

He himself has been an extra in many movies. He enthusiastically remembers having played a small role in the film. Malangi (1965) during which they hit him in the head. He staggers a little while representing the impact of the strike on him. It is not difficult to imagine him as an artist.

Like Bari Studios, Akbar's best days have been left behind. Now he tells how some of the most important actors he worked with did not listen to his plea for financial help when his daughters married. But then, Akbar has nine sons: five daughters and four sons.

Bari Studios was a town before being a filming set. And not everyone was happy with the takeover, with at least one posthumous protester. After the studio was built and filming began within its facilities, strange things began to happen. Akbar remembers that Sultan Rahi filmed for a movie whose title he doesn't remember. The actor was tied to a tree, but for some reason he could not descend even after the shooting ended, as if a supernatural force kept him there. Others say a wedding procession was being filmed when the girl who played the bride suddenly fell doli and he broke his leg. There were also cases of fires in the sets.

Frustrated, management addressed the townspeople to ask them why so many accidents occurred in the study. They were told that a saint buried in the facility was probably not satisfied with all the commotion around him. And so, at some point in the 1990s, a small sanctuary was built in honor of Hazrat Janab Ghaib Shah Wali Hyderi Qalandari, an alias that describes his notorious absence. The door of the sanctuary now remains closed, although it is easy to jump its low-limit wall, to avoid vagrants.

It's not easy to keep people away from Bari Studios. Baba Gulzar Ahmed is an old man with very few teeth and silver-white hair, who used to flow under his shoulders until recently. Now a septuagenarian, Gulzar arrived in Lahore from Gujranwala when he was a young man with dreams of succeeding as a movie hero. He regrets that he could not get a leading role.

After a series of insignificant appearances as an extra and background dancer, Gulzar turned to extras like Akbar and performed strange works that arose during film productions. His two sons, Nauman, 21, and Zaman, who seems to be around 40, have followed in his footsteps: they run an agency that supplies locations and actors for films and dramas.

Ghulam Abbas is another durable element of Bari Studios. He arrived there 30 years ago and since then he has designed costumes for countless films. So many, in fact, that he doesn't even remember their names. Instead, take out a lot of posters: Bandish, Jeeva Gujjar, Baghawat, Khan khela.

There are others like Gulzar and Abbas who roam the Bari Studios facilities telling stories of the past, lamenting the lack of work and livelihoods. Raees Ahmed, 59, calls himself a double, wrestling director and production manager. He emphasizes how important it is to do his designations well. Waheed Awan is director and disciple of Pervez Rana. Your movie Fauja (1996) was shot at Bari Studios, he says, while his last film Lahori Shehzaday (2006) was shot in Evernew Studios next door. He is currently working on a production entitled Hatyaar.

Together with the study, these men have become relics of yesteryear. They are eager for the moment someone told them those three magic words. The three words they didn't want whispered in their ears, but someone shouted with all their might: lights, camera, action!

Text by Ali Haider Habib; Nad-i-Ali's pictures

This photograph is part of a collaboration with Justice Project Pakistan, a non-profit organization based in Lahore that represents the most vulnerable prisoners, at home and abroad. To commemorate World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10, 2019, JPP will organize an immersive live art experience at Bari Studios from 5:30 p.m. at 10 p.m.