Film is considered as an important art form, it is not just a popular source of entertainment but also a powerful medium for educating or indoctrinating people. Therefore, making a film is an art and now-a-days it has taken a shape of an industry. Films reflect specific cultures thus considered as cultural artifacts and hence in turn affect people belonging to that culture.
The visual basis of film gives it a universal power of communication. Keeping this in mind V M Art Gallery, Karachi in collaboration with Visual Studies Department of Karachi University presented a group show titled "Lights, Art and ...Action!" This exhibition was the opening event of the Pakistan Calling Film Festival.
"Film has proved to be a wonderful and forceful means of entertainment and amusement. A powerful cultural and political visual tool, film has the power to influence the minds of millions and has changed societies and established social trends for generations," said curator of the exhibition Munawar Ali Syed. Beside an independent curator he is an active visual artist and art educationist. The exhibition has taken viewers through the artistic reel of film while exploring different mediums from drawings, paintings, sculptures, digital prints, videos to installations. The works of fifty artists who have come together for the first Pakistan Calling Film Festival 2016 has been exhibited.
"Lights, Art...and Action!" has created an opportunity for artists to channel the power of film through their art. Most of the artists used different mediums and styles to create individual images that make up a film while others projected the famous frames of blockbuster movies. Expressions, emotions, romance and Nature are the focus of artists - the most talked about subjects of our films. Some paintings discovered a few horror films made by our film industry.
The artworks were reflective and sensitive. The striking compositions of paintings depicted women lost in this degenerated world losing their identities and becoming a part of this social system, living their scattered lives unwillingly. While in other posters women seemed to be the strongest entity of our social structure.
Each artist's skills can be judged by the diversity of images, colours and confident strokes in their paintings and bold and sharp lines in the drawings. They rendered emotions and fervor with fresh and unique compositions of old film posters, which are skillfully created.
The characters and subjects diffused with each other in the paintings creating an aura of mystery between past and present. A painting of actress Zeba with actor Wheed Murad, a most loveable and bankable on-screen couple of 60s and 70s has an abstract background and a lady showing curiosity about the actors showed a connection of the present world with the past.
The artists got attracted by the fabulous lifestyle of those times. Therefore, they decided to highlight our relationship to the past. They have done figurative descriptive paintings of posters to enhance the importance of cultural heritage in our lives.
The colourful posters supported the Pakistan Calling Film Festival which is "an initiative designed to give independent and student filmmakers the opportunity to showcase their work in a space that celebrates and enables their cinematic creativity."
All the artists at the exhibition showed unique and individualistic styles of their own in their artworks. Participating artists included: Abdul Malik Channa, Ahmed Ali Manganhar, Ali Abrar, Aliya Yousuf, Anam Shakil, Asad Hussain, Bhola Ustud, Danish Ahmed, Farooq Mustufa, Firdoos Siddiqui, Fraz Abdul Mateen, Ghulam Hussain, Jannat Khalid, Liaqat Ali Kiani, M Kashif Khan, Madeeha Fasahat, Mohan Das Nayab Noor, Noman Bhatti, Nurayah Sheikh Nabi, Parvez Rana, Raheela Abro, Rameez Rehman, Rehma Iqbal, S. M. Raza, Sana Nezam, Sanki King, Shahana Munawar, Shanzay Subzwari, Sumaira Syed, Summaiya Jillani, Ustad M Rustum Khan, Wajid Ali Dharkiwalla and Yasmeen Salman other than Guddu (film archive). There were also three group-installations including artists: Haider Ali, Nabeel Majeed Sheikh, Noman Siddiqui, Sheema Khan.
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