Feb came. Feb gone.

February 2010, the most awaited 28 days month for the 30 young student filmmakers. It was full of hardcore work. All the groups were extremely busy in getting permissions, planning, arranging their characters for shooting, along with their already hectic school/college/university lives.

There have been lots of text messages and voice calls exchanges among all of them and with their volunteers, characters, authorities and all. Coping with their school /college /university teachers and assignments along with their shoots was a big challenge. They have to convince their respective teachers about the importance of this on going project. And they did.

Some of the groups have came up with exciting footage for their films and they have become even more excited about the post-production phase. These days everyone is busy in thinking about the kind of music they want to have in their films and talking to some musicians about it. Some are trying to get hold of the archival footage from news channels for their films.

Let’s see who makes a strong film and who fails to impress in March 2010. We are not too far from seeing their footage being cut on editing suite finally.

Moiz Masood Sultani.

SHIT… SHOOT … SHOUT

First shoot for social change and many lives changed.

2 blasts targeted the people coming to JULOOS to commemorate the 40th day of IMAM HUSSAIN (a.s.) martyrdom and of those who died on 28th december ASHURA blast.

Souls left bodies but spirit left unchanged.

Not a match stick burned. But things were different in evening than morning. People didn’t want to talk about anything.

And then there were us, me and Ali Changezi, assisted by two of our friends, Mohammad Raza, who already lost a cousin and 4 friends in Ashura blast, and Ibad Naqvi. We had press cards and security clearances.

That was easy, but that was also the only easy part.

Our shoot spanned for two days; started in evening of 4th feb. and went on to the night of 5th feb. First day shoot disturbed because of security clearance from special forces. The proceeding started at 7 in evening but we didn’t get clearance till 10 at night.

The blast spot, covered in rose petals and candle. people all around paying tribute to those departed souls of Ashura blast. There were people of all sects and ages paying tribute and lit candles. A kind of scene I had never seen before. Harmony and peace.

My mobile broked next morning on my wat to shoot, and all communication ended. Reached at Raza’s home after 30 min.s of tight security checking. Raza was not at home, so, I went to Changezi’s house. He had left 10 minutes earlier. Went back to Raza’s, met him and he told me Chazngezi, along with Ibad, will be in juloos shooting wide-angle shots. My job, was to get different angle and faces.

But we couldn’t communicate to each others, there were jammers around to jam mobile signals.

Problems! ha!, Just beginning.

With my mobile not working and raza’s useless because of jammers, news came of the first blast. Three different locations were given at that time, Shahrah-e-faisal, security check post near Quaid’s tomb and Saddar Bazzar. the latter two rejected very soon. Me and Raza, with press cards, were with media people from different channels. But, the real problem was that we had equipment that didn’t belong to us and they should be kept safe at the end. All we knew was that one camera, which was in my hand, was save, but we couldn’t communicate with Changezi and Ibad. And then as our problems were not enough, Raza’s mobile’s battery took its last breath and we were left with no way to communicate.

The only way was to go back from the start of Juloos to the end, than back to Raza’s home to pick the other mobile and comunicate Changezi and Ibad. we went back to the middle of Juloos when we realised there is no way to go back. Back to the starting point, where people sat down in protest and we were among the only few people standing. We requested Rangers to let us pass through a restricted area, after a short argument, they let us pass.

Now we head back to Raza’s place, took another mobile, left one video camera at his home and were on the way back to join the juloos, when news arrived of the second blast.

Final nail in the coffin.

All the media people were trying to stay at a long distance to avoid any unhappy incident. And we had document those people, can’t tell how many they were. Heads every where, any where we could see. A weak point, out of range of jammers, could imagine that after 2 blasts there was a weak point, but we managed to contact Changezi, Ibad and my family to tell them we were safe. My mother actually thought I was at Jinnah Hospital to donate blood, But the thing in my mind was to see Changezi and Ibad, with the equipment, safe and sound.

After almost 5 hours of lost contact, we met Changezi and Ibad. They had been shooting different wide shots of people. And we were reaching the Blast spot of Ashura Tragedy. We left juloos and start walking at the front. Thats the point where many of our friends watched us on TV, walking ahead of people.

People showed a little  a little aggression at the blast spot. We shot their agression, running backward. We had done our shoot till the blast spot, thats what we wanted, though nobody wanted to gave us interview. We continued walking ahead of people. Every box, shutter and window seemed filled with a bomb ready to detonate. And then, after sometime there was call for Maghrib prayers. We had reached the destination in the midst of tight security and tragedies. 25 people lost their life on that day. And we survived to show the world that Pakistanis are not terrorist and they against extremism and terrorism as much as west do, may more than the west do.

We had decided, that we will dedicate our documentary to those people who lost life on Ashura blast, shopkeepers who lost their business, People who lost life in a blast that targeted the main juloos,where we could be a victim too. We are in debt of those life.

Hope, no other incident like that happened any more. But one can only hope. On that day I realized one thing, BETTER BE DEAD THAN GIVEN UP. Long live Pakistan, Long live Peace…..ALLAH HAFIZ