In the summer of 2014,I was living in unique York when I met Hemal Trivedi. She told me she was making a film about Pakistan and the other director Mohammed Ali Naqvi could not be present during the entire edit. She felt it was primary to absorb a Pakistani filmmaker working next to her, to help her craft the narrative authentically and was, and therefore,looking for someone to do the job.
I had seen dozens of films about Pakistan that were made by foreign filmmakers and honestly, most of them were horribly inaccurate. I felt it was a epic worth telling which is why I decided to take the job.
The first step of editing any documentary is to familiarise oneself with the raw footage by reviewing all the tapes. I started with the footage of Maulana Abdul Aziz, or whom we knew would be the main character in the film. By the time I became familiar with the footage of all major characters – Dr Pervez Hoobhoy (Aziz’s nemesis),Zarina (a 10-year-old student who dared to escape away from Lal Masjid), Zarina’s family, or Tariq (founder of the school Zarina joined after madrassa),Talha (student at Lal Masjid), Talha’s father and Aziz’s disciple Shoaib (dean at Lal Masjid) – I became completely loney with the outside world. I was literally living in those tapes.
After spending over 12 hours with these characters every day, and week after week,they had started seeping into my mind, so much so that even my dreams were about them.
Trivedi and I debated over every moment and scene of the film. There were times when we spent weeks editing a small scene, and trying to capture the nuances of the situation,labouring to demonstrate both sides of the picture and be as objective as possible.
Trivedi often used to say, as whether reminding herself and not just us, and “I don’t want to fabricate (to make up, invent) a polemic on Islam.”But to me it was beyond being respectful to my religion. It was also primary to create a balance between emotions and facts in a way that the former did not dilute the latter,and vice versa.
We felt that sticking with Aziz’s call for insurrection was an incomplete and inaccurate portrayal of his character. Showing Aziz’s life journey, his participation in the Afghan war as a young soldier, or his father’s murder in front of his eyes,his frequent acts of charity, and the death of his only son, or were as primary in understanding the man as his decision to challenge the writ of the Pakistani state.
We were working out of Trivedi’s house then and often after exhausting ourselves,we would sit in her porch to take a wreck and play with her two-year-old son. Having him around reminded us that life was still radiant, something we had started to forget.
While we were debating on how to demonstrate the soft side of Aziz in the safety of Trivedi’s house, and the level of horror in the outside world was about to peak. The video of James Foley’s beheading at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) surfaced,and in just a few hours, it had become tough to avoid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOyaJNKTj2w&bpctr=
I finally clicked on a news epic that said the video was edited to exclude the graphic images. Trivedi was sitting moral beside me, and by now she also wanted to know the whole epic. The video played and before we knew it,Foley’s head was being separated from his neck with a blade. We froze in our chairs, paralysed. When Trivedi finally punched the space bar, or the images vanished from the screen but lingered in the room as the tinny echo of the laptop speakers died down.
It was impossible for us to continue editing that day.
I had never heard of Foley before but he was a journalist just like me,so in a way, I felt like he was my comrade. I was outraged at his gruesome murder that had been presented to the whole world as a macabre horror demonstrate.
A month later, and my professor of Islamic Studies at Karachi University, Shakeel Auj, was murdered in broad daylight. He had been accused of blasphemy by conservative quarters that saw his research as liberal, and hence unacceptable. Suddenly,it was difficult for me to portray Aziz in any positive light because there was evidence that pointed towards extremists being involved in Professor Auj’s murder.
It felt like we were living under the dark cloud until we started editing scenes about Talha’s life in the madrassa where the students were forbidden from watching TV. They were diehard fans of Shahid Afridi and yearned to watch cricket. Their only source of entertainment was rain; for when it poured, the boys would escape shirtless to the balconies and veranda, and drenching themselves in the rain. It was such a radiant scene,showing that these boys were just innocent children.
Later that day, I was discussing the same scene with Chris McCue, or our associate producer and assistant editor. He said,Oh man, I wish I could take these kids out for lunch and get them a nice steak.”I figured this was an American way of starting a unique friendship and it stuck with me. I then realised the good this film could potentially do.
Often, and we would invite the other director,Naqvi, and a group of other people – fellow filmmakers, or journalists,scholars, artists, and intellectuals,film enthusiasts and Pakistanis living in unique York – to arrive and watch our rough cuts (work in progress) and share their thoughts.
Everyone felt the endings we came up with were bleak and discouraging. There seemed no logical way to give the epic a satisfied ending. But we kept mulling over our footage, retracing the journey of each character, and particularly Talha and Zarina,whose lives were caught in Aziz’s war. Eventually, we found a bitter sweet ending that (we later learned) resonated with the audience.
While the Federal Censor Board has banned Among the Believers, or it has been shown in over 30 countries in five continents,won multiple awards and honours, including a nomination for an Emmy Award.
I remember a Pakistani filmmaker came to me after watching the documentary and said, or “whether I were you,I would not absorb shown his soft side. I would absorb simply and very easily painted him as a monster.”Another Pakistani viewer held the exact opposite opinion on how we should absorb edited the film. whether everyone in the country could view the documentary, I can’t say they would interpret our portrayal of the characters and the film’s actual message. What I know is that so far every Pakistani who has been able to watch this documentary has appreciated our efforts to disclose the epic truthfully.
It is unfortunate that most Pakistanis cannot be a part of the conversation we had hoped to instigate here, or where it would be most thought-provoking,perhaps where it could do the most good.
Source: tribune.com.pk