Film director Salmaan Peerzada ditches the good-guy bad-guy format to produce a political drama which redefines Pakistani cinema. David Behrens finds out why.

It cost Salmaan Peerzada nearly £1m to make the film which premieres in Bradford tomorrow.

That sort of cash would barely pay for the crew's bacon butties on a British or American shoot. But in Pakistan it was sufficient to virtually redefine the national film industry.

Zar Gul (Golden Rose) is as different from the generally-perceived "Lollywood" image of Pakistani cinema as Disney is from Danny Boyle. Instead of the beloved song-and-dance, good-guy-bad guy format (which its director dismisses as "crappy") here is a political drama which confronts head-on the causes of Pakistan's governmental turbulence of recent years.

"This is the first truly international Pakistani movie," says Peerzada, who will be in Bradford for tomorrow's screening at Pictureville Cinema. "Pakistan has not attempted previously to make anything for the international market because the technical standards are appalling. They're content to turn out stuff for purely local consumption.

"So it was difficult to do a film for which the infrastructure's not there. No crew, no equipment, no one you can trust... none of the things you need for a big movie."

Peerzada, who was eventually compelled to edit his film in London, is uncompromising about the state of his country's cinema.

"They stick to the old-fashioned crappy routine, in spite of the fact that there's a great big movie-going audience which is getting fed up with watching non-stop nonsense."

Pakistan turns out between 70 and 100 films a year, budgeted at around half a million dollars apiece. It's a sizeable industry - although compared to India's output of up to 600 features a year, it's peanuts.

"Up until the mid-60s, all the big Hollywood studios had distribution offices in Pakistan, so English language films were shown on a regular basis," says Peerzada.

"Then there was political turmoil, and we started importing third-rate action movies; inferior versions of Van Damme's pictures, and bad Kung Fu movies. A lot of violence. Now, the cycle's turning again and the distributors are starting to push upmarket good-quality English pictures. And some of them have made more money than the local product, even where people are not able to follow the language all the way through."

He hopes these market trends point to a ready audience for Zar Gul. Thus far, preview screenings in Lahore and at the London Film Festival have been encouraging.

Peerzada is the son of the playwright Rafi Peer, one of the founding fathers of South Asian theatres. He's also a noted actor in his own right. Currently, though, he's putting his energies into attempting to secure an arthouse release for Zar Gul in Britain.

"Usually that means London, but in this case I'm trying to persuade the distributors that they should look for a wider audience in places like Bradford, Birmingham, Glasgow and other cities which have a substantial Pakistani population.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.