If you ask director Sarmad Khoosat about the state of Pakistani cinema, he will start by referring to his childhood when it was all bad, formula films. Before that cinema had some artistic value, but in the late 1990s it all ended.

He was speaking on a panel Zindagi Tamasha (Hai) on Jan 12, day two of the Think Fest in Lahore, moderated by Adeel (the actor in drama Parizad). Adeel opened by asking if Pakistan even makes enough films? Is anything produced beyond the so-called Karachi-Lahore Islamabad or KLI circle?

Sarmad said that people have become outdated in every field and this is also the case with the Pakistani film industry; the old guard (directors and producers) have not kept up with the times. There should be variety in films. This is the key.

Nirmal Bano, the screenwriter of Zindagi Tamasha, said that we cannot decide what an audience wants to see if we have not shown them anything. We can still make niche films for certain audiences but we need to invest less money in those projects as these films make less money. There are many directors and producers in the industry who are out of touch with the general public but they still think they can tell the public what it wants.

And as to the message in films, Nirmal said that there is always one but it should be received from the other side and not from the film itself. Audiences should make up their minds on what to take away from the film.

Adeel said that the recent films are either watched by the elite or are the Gujjar films watched in small theaters by a very specific sector of society. Do we make films for the middle class?

Sarmad replied that no film was “one size fits all”. Even ticket prices are staggered and cinemas had to provide variety. Maula Jatt was a case in point. “Let the genre evolve itself and it will become better and we need more cinema halls,” he said. We need to bring cinema to the people. “Right now the halls are expensive, those in shopping malls. We need to open more cinema halls. Why was the cinema closed at Laxmi Chowk where the cheap tickets were sold?”

When asked why there were such few good scripts, Nirmal said she felt that there are too many restrictions on writers placed by the producers so there is no room for creativity left. The other problem is that the writers are severely underpaid.

Sarmad felt that writers should do more research instead of trying to develop superficial scripts from headline news. That is not enough, not a sophisticated approach.

In answer to a question raised by an audience member as to why Maula Jatt was so violent, Sarmad said that while that was true, audiences had to make a choice to go watch it. It would help if there were ratings to help people decide.