In Pakistan, trans men search for inclusion, visibility

By RIAZAT BUTT

Pakistani trans man Aman, who asked not be identifiable in the photo, looks out at his home after an interview with The Associated Press, in Lahore, Pakistan, Friday, Dec. 2, 2022. Trans people are considered outcasts by many in Pakistan, despite some progress with a law protecting their rights and court rulings that allow them to choose a gender that is neither male nor female. But the struggle for acceptance and inclusion is harder for Pakistan's trans men, who say they lack the same level of support and visibility as trans women, who are in public office, in films, and on TV. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Aman, a 22-year-old transgender man from the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, says he was always close to his father. When he was little and it was cold out, his father held his hands to warm them. When he was at university, his father would wait until he got home to eat dinner together, regardless of how late it was.

Now they are cut off. Aman’s decision to live as a man has cost him everything. His parents and five siblings no longer speak to him. He dropped out of university and had to leave home. He has attempted suicide three times.

Trans men face deep isolation in Pakistan. The country, with a conservative Muslim majority, has entrenched beliefs on gender and sexuality, so trans people are often considered outcasts. But trans women have a degree of toleration because of cultural traditions. Trans women in public office, on news programs, in TV shows and films, even on the catwalk, have raised awareness about a marginalized and misunderstood community.

The Pakistani movie and Oscar contender “Joyland” caused an uproar last year for its depiction of a relationship between a married man and a trans woman, but it also shone a spotlight on the country’s transgender community.

Trans men, however, remain largely invisible, with little mobilization, support or resources. Trans women have growing activist networks — but, according to Aman and others, they rarely incorporate or deal with trans men and their difficulties.

“It’s the worst,” said Aman. “We are already disowned by our families and blood relatives, then the people we think are our people also exclude us.”

Trans women have been able to carve out their space in the culture because of the historic tradition of “khawaja sira,” originally a term for male eunuchs working in South Asia’s Mughal empire hundreds of years ago. Today, the term is generally associated with people who were born male and identify as female. Khawaja sira culture also has a traditional support system of “gurus,” prominent figures who lead others.

But there is no space within the term or the culture surrounding it for people who were born female and identify as male.

“Every khawaja sira is transgender, but not all transgenders are khawaja sira,” said Mani, a representative for the trans male community in Pakistan. “People have been aware of the khawaja sira community for a long time, but not of trans men.”

He set up a nonprofit group in 2018 because he saw nothing being done for trans men, their well-being or mental health.

Trans people have seen some progress in protecting their rights. Supreme Court rulings allow them to self-identify as a third gender, neither male nor female, and have underscored they have the same rights as all Pakistani citizens.

Although Mani was involved in the trans rights bill, most lobbying and advocacy work has been from transgender women since it became law.

“Nobody talks about trans men or how they are impacted by the act,” said Mani. “But this is not the right time to talk about this because of the campaign by religious extremists (to veto changes to the act). I don’t want to cause any harm to the community.”

Another reason for trans men’s low visibility is that females lead a more restricted life than males in Pakistan, with limits on what they can do, where they can go and how they can live. Family honor is tied to the behavior of women and girls, so they have less room to behave outside society’s norms. On a practical level, even if a girl wanted to meet trans people and get involved in the community, she wouldn’t be able to because she wouldn’t be allowed out, said Aman.

Coming from a privileged and educated family, Aman said his parents indulged him as a child, letting him behave in ways seen as male and dress in a boyish way. He wore a boy’s uniform to school.

But there came a time when he was expected to live and look like a girl. That meant fewer freedoms and the prospect of marriage. He didn’t want that life and knew there were operations to change his gender. But his father told him he was too young and would have to wait until he was 18, apparently hoping he would grow out of it.

Aman had nobody to speak to about his gender identity struggles. He used social media and search engines, making contact with a trans man in India who connected him with a WhatsApp group of trans men in Pakistan.

Aman grew his hair long and dressed like a girl “just to survive” while still at home, he said. He also felt he shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the family’s honor.

“These restrictions created a war in my mind,” he said. “You have to socialize, and it was difficult for me because I had to socialize as a girl.”

He wasn’t allowed male friends because of the taboos around mixing with the opposite sex, nor was he allowed female friends because his parents feared it would lead to a lesbian relationship.

Still, Aman set goals to get educated, earn money and be independent, planning eventually to live as a man. By 2021, he was on hormone therapy and his voice was changing.

But it all changed when a family member asked outright if Aman was changing his gender. The question inflamed all the doubts and worries his parents already had about his steps to transition. They disowned him, saying he could no longer live under their roof if he wanted to live as a man.

“They said everything can be tolerated but we can’t tolerate this,” Aman said. His mother said it would hurt his siblings and their marital prospects. His sisters locked him in a bathroom once. Only his older brother supported him.

Aman moved out and began living alone – and fully as a man.

Mani has helped, giving him an office job at the non-governmental organization. Still, Aman barely gets by and faces constant problems. One is that he hasn’t changed his gender to male officially on his ID card, which he needs to vote, open a bank account, apply for jobs and access government benefits including health care.

He went once to NADRA, the government agency responsible for ID cards, but there the officials harassed him. They inspected him, talked derisively about him, and demanded a bribe. One official felt his chest.

He feels isolated.

“I’m satisfied with my gender, but I’m not happy to live anymore,” he said. “I love my family. I need my father, I need my brother.”

Some good news
Editorial 

Published December 25, 2022 

IT should be a moment of pride for the country that the film Joyland has become the first Pakistani film to be shortlisted for the best International Feature Film category by an Oscar committee. Joyland is one of 15 films that made the cut in the category which saw nominations from 92 countries. The development is a huge honour for the team that worked on the film, and will serve as encouragement not just for the film crew but also the independent film community in Pakistan.

It is an unfortunate reality that though the film has been appreciated by the Academy Awards and gained recognition at several other international film festivals, it is still not being shown in Punjab. Earlier, it was banned across the country, but after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered a committee to review the film, thankfully the ban was lifted. It reminds one of the numerous other instances where Pakistan has been celebrated by the international community for an achievement that has hardly been recognised at home. Dr Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s first Nobel laureate, was recognised for his work in physics internationally, but unfortunately at home, his name and legacy are largely absent from the history books. Such occasions must compel our leaders to reflect on why the nation has reached this unpleasant juncture, and what can be done to address it. Joyland explores the relationship between a married man and a transgender woman, and while it is a novel subject when it comes to films made locally, it is by no means offensive. In fact, it tells the story of a community that is vilified and violently attacked. As the people celebrate this piece of good news, its political stakeholders must do more to support art and creative expression as well as deliberate on ways to promote tolerance. It is disappointing that despite the court and parliament recognising the rights of transpeople, there are many elements in society who are able to create a climate of fear that leads to such bans.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2022

Hakawatis: Reclaiming the Arabian Nights



Sarah Shaffi
15 December, 2022

As a new production offers a fresh, feminist take on 1,001 Nights, writer Hannah Khalil talks about the show and how it’s offering a new view of Arab women.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘Arabian Nights’? Aladdin and his magic carpet will almost certainly spring to mind. Perhaps Ali Baba and his thieves. At a push, you might think about the storyteller behind it all, Sheherazade.

It’s likely that whatever you do think of has a Western lens on it, and is possibly shaped by Disney or the very British tradition of pantomime.

"It's a woman who wins, a woman who's allowed to win eventually. And we rarely get that”

The versions you’ve seen or heard or read will either sideline women or sexualise and exoticise them, and whatever you’ve consumed will be much less dark than the original.

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Now, all those versions of the Arabian Nights, or 1,001 Nights as it is sometimes also called, are set to be challenged by Hakawatis, a new play at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, written by Hannah Khalil, who is looking to reclaim the stories for women, and Arab women in particular.

Houda Echouafni as Wadiha, Roann McCloskey as Naha, 

Nadi Kemp-Sayfi as Akila, and Laura Hanna as Zuya 

“I think the framing structure of Arabian Nights is incredibly feminist because she [Sheherazade] saves her life and everyone else's by telling stories,” Hannah tells The New Arab. “It's a woman who wins, a woman who's allowed to win eventually. And we rarely get that.”

Hakawatis is a corrective to that, centring not just one, but five women: Fatah the Young (played by Alaa Habib), Akila the Writer (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi), Zuya the Warrior (Laura Hanna), Wadiha the Dancer (Houda Echouafni) and Naha the Wise (Roann Hassani McCloskey).

Alaa Habib as Fatah the Young 

Houda Echouafni as Wadiha the Dancer 

Nadi Kemp-Sayfi as Akila the Writer

After deciding on five parts, Hannah said she wanted to have them as “different facets, sort of archetypes”.

“But there is a world in which you could read this play and say those five women are all Sheherazade,” she says.

Having “always been frustrated with the parts that are available for global majority actors, but specifically Arab women”, Hannah has spent much of her career “trying to create roles that are more diverse and interesting and three-dimensional Arab women”.

The other thing she’s often done in her work is create stories within stories; the Arabian Nights is, of course, one of the ultimate examples of stories within a story, with all its tales framed by the larger story of Sheherazade fighting for survival.

The idea for Hakawatis came to Hannah slowly, then all in a rush. She had seen two productions at the Lyceum in Edinburgh which were adaptations of 1,001 Nights; the first was the Tim Supple-directed One Thousand and One Nights, with stories adapted by Hanan al-Shaykh, and the other was a production for children called Arabian Nights, written by Suhayla El-Bushra.

Hakawatis Rehearsal Photos taken on 11 November 2022 

[Shakespeares Globe]

And then she went to see Lions and Tigers by Tanika Gupta at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and “fell in love” with the theatre space, which is lit by one hundred beeswax candles and is created in the tradition of the candlelit theatres of Shakespeare’s time.

“I think all of those things sort of crystallised in my head as I was walking home along the Thames to the station,” she tells The New Arab. “I thought ‘oh' and that's how I had this idea. So I think it's like all of those things were sitting in different bits of my brain and they all just crystallised having seen that beautiful play and that beautiful space.”

And so Hakawatis came into being, directed by Pooja Ghai, who directed that production of Lions and Tigers that Hannah watched.

Pooja is the artistic director of the theatre company Tamasha; Hakawatis is a co-production with Tamasha.

The play features eight stories in total. Four are from the original 1,001 Nights, with Hannah wanting to use stories people had most likely never heard before, “because there’s only a few used” regularly.

She thought she would read the whole of 1,001 Nights, but “failed because it’s so bloody long”. “But I sort of would start a story and be like, no, not this one,” she says. In the end, she settled on The Fisherman and the Djinn, The Wolf and the Fox, The King and the Sage and The Sparrow and the Eagle.

The fifth story is an adaptation that Hannah, who is of Palestinian and Irish descent, has done of an old Palestinian folktale. The final three are original new stories, specially commissioned by Hannah from al-Shaykh and El-Bushra – the two women whose plays she had seen that helped inspire her story – and Sara Shaarawi.

Their inclusion speaks again to Hannah’s love of stories within stories.

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“I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if we could have some new stories, and wouldn't it be amazing if I could get other Arab women writers to write those?” says Hannah. “And then we've got a situation where the way it's made, the way it's written, mirrors what's happening in the play.”

The play explores, says Hannah, “different notions of storytelling”, perhaps unsurprising for anyone who speaks Arabic and knows that ‘hakawati’ means ‘storyteller’.

The play is exploring the “idea of storytelling written down, which is a very Western form of storytelling,” says Hannah. “And storytelling as in the spoken, the oral tradition, which is obviously much more from the MENA region.”

“If you've got one idea of what you think an Arab woman looks like, you need to bin it”

In a call-out to that oral tradition, every telling of The Fisherman and the Djinn during the play’s run will be unique. “So The Fisherman and the Djinn story is written on the page,” says Hannah, “but it says every night the actors are to improvise this live. It's like an offer to the actors to do it for real.”

Her actors, and the roles they play, are partly how Hannah is looking to push back against people’s stereotypes of Arab women. She wanted to make sure “that all these women are composites of other women I know so that they're truthful”.

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That truth means that Hakawatis, Hannah says, “won't be for everybody”.

“There'll be some people who feel like it's maybe a little bit too racy or something,” she continues. All the women on stage are “strong, beautiful, ferocious women,” says Hannah, adding: “If you've got one idea of what you think an Arab woman looks like, you need to bin it.”

Hakawatis is at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until January 14

Sarah Shaffi is a freelance literary journalist and editor. She writes about books for Stylist Magazine online and is the books editor at Phoenix Magazine.
Follow her here: @sarahshaffi

Photos by Ellie Kurttz

 

Controversial Pakistani Film ‘Joyland’ Officially Under Oscar Consideration After Attempted Government Ban

Story by Brent Furdyk • Yesterday 

"Joyland" could be on its way to winning an Oscar.

On Tuesday, Dec. 6, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled its list of foreign films under official consideration for Oscar nomination for the 2023 Academy Awards.

Among the many films listed, one that stands out is "Joyland", the acclaimed feature debut from Pakistani filmmaker Saim Sadiq.

What makes the inclusion of "Joyland" so unique is the controversy the film generated in Pakistan, with the government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting attempting to block the film's release in response to complaints that the film contains “highly objectional material” that doesn't align with the “social values and moral standards of our society.”

While the film was met with scorn from the Pakistani government, “Joyland” had already won acclaim at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, winning the festival’s Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the unofficial Queer Palm, while also holding the distinction of becoming the first Pakistani movie ever to screen at Cannes.

At the heart of the controversy is the film's subject matter, surrounding a love story between a cisgender male and a trans woman.


Controversial Pakistani Film ‘Joyland’ Officially Under Oscar Consideration After Attempted Government Ban© Provided by ET Canada

Following international outcry over the government's attempts to ban the film, "Joyland" was subsequently released as scheduled; had it been blocked or delayed, the film would not have been eligible for Oscar consideration, as Academy rules stipulate it needs to run in theatres for a minimum of seven days before Nov. 30 to be in contention for the 2023 Academy Awards.

According to Sadiq, he never intended to make a controversial movie.

“My only interest was cinematic,” he told Deadline. “I wanted to talk about patriarchy and I wanted to talk about sexuality and gender in relation to myself and my family and my surroundings and my city... '[I] never looked at it as ‘Oh it is such a bold or courageous film.’ I made the film that I wanted to make.”

As a first-time filmmaker, Sadiq admitted he's experienced an “eventful journey of learning a lot of things and seeing for the first time, creating something that connects with other people in a way that I of course never experienced not only because I haven’t made a feature film before, but also because I think this film has connected in a way that even in my wildest dreams I didn’t imagine that it would connect with people from various parts of the world.”

The Oscar nominations will be revealed on Jan. 24, 2023.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for JOYLAND 

Why Joyland movie stirred controversy in Pakistan

Haroon Janjua 

NOV 21,2022

Islamabad


The film has opened in some parts of Pakistan after conservative sections opposed its screening in the Muslim-majority country. DW explores what caused the controversy.

The Pakistani government initially banned the screening of Joyland, a film that explores the relationship between a married man and a transgender woman. 

The ban was later lifted by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government, but the filmmakers are still not allowed to show it in many parts of the country, including the Punjab province.

The movie was banned for showcasing "highly objectionable" content, according to the Punjab government, which insists it can't allow its release "in the wake of persistent complaints received from different quarters."

In May, Joyland won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the unofficial Queer Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival. It then became Pakistan's official entry to the Oscars for the international feature film award.

Acclaimed internationally, why did the film land in controversy in Pakistan?
The controversy

Filmed in Lahore city, Joyland tackled the subject of transgender rights in Pakistan. The movie features a married man who falls in love with a transgender woman dancer.

Transgender people in Pakistan often complain of legal and social discrimination. A large section of the Islamic country considers LGBTQ activities "immoral" and "un-Islamic."

VIDEO Pakistan: Why transgender persons' rights are not a charity 04:34

In August, the Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) had granted the filmmakers the license to screen the movie in theaters across the country, but the federal Information Ministry later said that it had stopped the screening of the movie as it did not "conform with the social values and moral stands of our society."

The [film] content is "clearly repugnant to the norms of decency and morality" in line with the relevant laws, according to the ministry's statement.

Saim Sadiq, the movie director, derided the decision as "absolutely unconstitutional and illegal."

"We — a team — are gutted by this development but fully intend to raise our voice against this grave injustice," Sadiq wrote on Instagram last week.
Religious morality vs. human rights

Mushtaq Ahmed, a senator belonging to the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party, told DW that Joyland goes against "family values and social norms."

"This movie is an act of war against our social values," Ahmed said.

Civil society activists say it is not the first time Islamic sections have called for a ban on movies that promote human rights.

"The film has beautifully tackled the deep-rooted patriarchal issues and attempted to break the myths and stereotypes," Farzana Bari, an Islamabad-based human rights activist, told DW.

"Linking transgender rights to sexuality is absurd. The transgender people have their rights and they need to be liberated," Bari added.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and social activist, says that even those who have not watched the movie are vouching for its ban.
Rising violence against transgender people

Some legal experts are of the view that the ban on Joyland is unconstitutional and that it should be lifted in all parts of the country.

Pakistan: Transgender people fight to abolish torture 03:44

"The revocation of clearance certificate by the Punjab censor [board] is completely arbitrary and a capitulation to obscurantist elements, because the film was [earlier] given a thumbs up by the board after it watched it and found it fit for exhibition," Osama Malik, a human rights lawyer, told DW.

"The ban goes against the freedoms guaranteed in our constitution. The [censor] board should not pander to mullahs and must restore the clearance certificate so that the film can be exhibited in the country's most populous [Punjab] province," he added.

Activists say the [partial] ban on the movie would only justify discrimination against the transgender community.

Rights groups point to an alarming increase in violence and hate crimes against the transgender people in the country. According to Pakistan's Trans-Action Alliance, some 91 transgender women have been killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since 2015, with more than 2,000 registered cases of violence across the northwestern province.

Shiraz Hassan, who watched Joyland in Islamabad, says the film "starts with a birth and ends with a death."

"Between this, there is a Joyland; a land where we are seeking joy," he told DW. "The film is not about LGBTQ relationships; it's about Pakistani women, a transgender person, and a patriarchal society. It is a story about a transgender woman, a working woman, a wife, a mother, and a widow," Hassan added.

Edited by: Shamil Shams

Is Joyland’s crime that it mirrors society to a fault?

Films like Joyland are banned because 'image-conscious' countries like Pakistan have plenty of skeletons in the closet.

Fahad Naveed

Published November 21, 2022 

By now, you have probably come across an instantly iconic image from Saim Sadiq’s Joyland. It shows a man on the backseat of a motorcycle, carrying a massive cutout of a theatre show dancer. We do not see the face of the man, Haider (Ali Junejo), whose back is towards us. Instead, the cutout of Biba (Alina Khan), a khwaja sirah starlet and Haider’s boss, stares back at us. Much like Biba herself, the larger-than-life cutout demands attention. And much like Biba, the cutout is not easy to put in a corner or hide away.

Haider, the second son in a middle-class family in Lahore, works as Biba’s background dancer. Having to hide his real job from his family, he tells them that he is a theatre manager.

One night, he ends up with the giant cutout at home. He struggles to hide it. Keeping it indoors is not safe — Rana Amanullah (Salmaan Peerzada), his strict father, may see it. So Haider and his wife, Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), decide to take it up to the roof. But the cutout has to be hidden from the neighbours too. So the couple covers it with a white sheet.

The sheet barely makes a difference. By the morning, the cutout has caught the eye of a concerned neighbour, Fayyaz (Sania Saeed). How could it not? Hiding away something of that scale is no easy task.

Concealment, secrets, hidden truths and repressed desires are all themes Joyland explores. The film raises pertinent, difficult questions. It is no surprise then that there are active efforts to hide and conceal the film in Pakistan. By now, you must also know that the film’s release was barred by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in a notification dated November 11, nearly three months after it was first given certification by all three censor boards (more on that later). The decision was reversed on Nov 16. But the film found itself banned again in Punjab.

The back and forth brings to question the role of the censor boards. It also brings into unflattering focus Pakistan’s history of film bans and censorship.
Déjà vu

We’ve been here many times before. WZ Ahmed’s film Roohi (1954) became the first film to be banned in Pakistan. According to an obituary of the filmmaker, the government took issue with the film for generating ‘class hatred’ and for showing an affair between a married woman and a young man. The filmmaker responded to the ban by pointing out that he was only showing the realities of society. The ban was eventually lifted.

The back and forth being experienced by Joyland was also meted out to the original Maula Jat, the censor certificate for which was cancelled by the Zia government. As film historian Mushtaq Gazdar writes in his book Pakistani Cinema 1947-1997, before the authorities could act, Maula Jat’s producers obtained a stay order from the high court against the censor board. The film ran for two and a half years, setting box office records. Finally, when the stay order expired, the police forcibly removed it from the cinemas.

The government’s attempts to defeat and silence Maula Jatt clearly failed. Maula is indestructible. As he himself declares, “Maulay nu Maula na maray, tay Maula naee marda [Maula won’t die unless God kills him]”. Not only did the film amass a cult following and kickstart a sub-genre of gandasa films, a remake is currently setting box office records around the world.

In the decades since, dozens of films have found themselves banned in Pakistan. A Twitter thread by filmmaker Javaria Waseem lists many of them. Recent examples include Durj (2019), Javed Iqbal: The Untold Story of A Serial Killer (2019) and I’ll Meet You There (2020).

The circus of life

Then there is Sarmad Khoosat’s Zindagi Tamasha (2019), which also made its mark internationally at festivals including the Busan International Film Festival, only to have its release barred because of pressure from the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). Much like in the case of Joyland, those who pressured the government into blocking the film had not even watched it. While it was eventually announced that the film will be released in Pakistan in March 2022, it is yet to be released.

Khoosat is also one of the producers of Joyland. Thinking about Khoosat and the question of censorship, one is reminded of his performance as Manto. In the 2015 film/drama, Khoosat delivers Manto’s response to those who accused him of spreading obscenity: “Main tehzeeb-o-tamaddun aur society ki choli kia utaaron ga jo hai hee nangi … Main issey kaprey pehnaane ki koshish bhi nahin karta, isliyeh ke woh mera kaam nahin, darzion ka hai.” Manto questioned how he could undress an already naked society, pointing out that he did not even try to dress the naked society because that was not his job, but that of tailors.

In 2018, the film Manto by Nandita Das was also banned in Pakistan. Das hoped that her tribute to Manto would be able to traverse borders, but it was not meant to be. (The film can now be watched on Netflix. In this day and age, most films eventually do make their way to the audiences.)

One of the reasons for the ban was the presence of scenes that were deemed ‘obscene’ by the censor board. Commenting on the ban, late IA Rehman wrote: “Censorship has always been defended in terms of a need to protect impressionable minds. One hopes Pakistani audiences are not as vulnerable to adult cinema as they were when the Cinematograph Act of 1918 was enforced.”

Rehman Sahib pointed to the need to rethink the policies in place. Similarly, Hasan Zaidi, filmmaker and Dawn’s Magazines Editor, has previously suggested moving from censorship to certification and introducing “an enforced ratings system that trusts the people of Pakistan.” This model is in place in neighbouring India, at least in name. On multiple occasions, filmmakers such as Zoya Akhtar have stressed that their Central Board of Film Certification should not be censoring films, but rather giving films an Adult certificate where appropriate.

In Pakistan, matters are further complicated by the presence of three boards. After the 18th Amendment devolved most ministries to the provincial level, films receive certifications from the Sindh Board of Censors (SBFC), the Punjab Board of Film Censors (PBFC) and the Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC, which oversees the federal capital areas of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, the cantonment areas around the country and the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan). The three bodies have often been on different pages.

Currently, Punjab’s censor board has blocked Joyland’s release in the province where the film is set. The decision is reportedly under review.
Image conscious

If the tailor’s job is to dress people, what is the job of the storyteller?

To go back to Manto’s words to his detractors: Log mujhe siyah qalam kehte hain, lekin main takhta-e-siyah par kaali chalk se nahin likhta, safaid chalk istemaal karta hoon takey takhta-e-siyah aur bhi numayan ho jaaye. It was not that Manto’s pen was black. He would use white chalk to write on the blackboard, which made the blackboard’s darkness even more prominent.

Artists, writers, filmmakers have long paid the price for shedding light on matters society would rather remain hidden.

It seems many in Pakistan have decided that the job of a storyteller should be to ‘promote a positive image’ of the country. This is not their job. On the show Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Saath, filmmaker Sadiq spoke about misconceptions regarding what a film is supposed to do. A film’s job is not promotion of any kind, Sadiq points out. Films — specifically good films — are meant to depict, not promote.

As Malala Yousafzai, who is an executive producer of Joyland, writes: “Too often in my country, we expect art to serve as public relations. Tired of seeing negative portraits from the rest of the world, we want stories that cast ourselves as unequivocal heroes.”

There are no heroes in Sadiq’s film. The characters are flawed humans.

One such character is of Biba. The role is brilliantly played by Alina Khan, a transgender woman — a historic feat in itself. In Biba, we have a khwaja sirah character unlike any other we see on our screens. Biba is stern when she needs to be — “Biba nahin, Madam kehna hai mainu [Not Biba, you have to call me Madam],” she tells one of her male background dancers. She is flirty when she wants her way. She is vulnerable when she allows herself to be. She has a guru. She has dreams. She is a human not a joke or a punchline, like so many transgender characters in Pakistani films often are.

Of course, Joyland is not just Biba’s story. And the ensemble cast along with Abdullah Siddiqui’s score and Sadiq’s loving storytelling are brilliant.

But that’s just my opinion. Every Pakistani should have the option of watching the film and forming their own. Audiences may hate it, love it or choose not to watch it — but they should not be robbed of that choice.

‘It’s not against Islam’: Pakistani trans actor tells of deep sadness over film ban

Exclusive: Alina Khan, star of award-winning Joyland, speaks out as the movie’s licence for domestic release is revoked, putting its Oscar contention in doubt

Alina Khan, who plays a trans dancer in the Urdu film Joyland.

 Photograph: Courtesy of Alina Khan

Zofeen T Ebrahim

in Karachi

Tue 15 Nov 2022

The transgender star of an award-winning Pakistan film that depicts a love affair between a man and a trans women has said she is very sad at the government’s decision to ban the movie and hopes it will be reversed.

Alina Khan, who stars in Joyland, the first major Pakistani motion picture to feature a trans actor in a lead role, said: “I’ve been very sad. There’s nothing against Islam and I don’t understand how Islam can get endangered by mere films.”

The 24-year-old added: “The Pakistani trans community was also very upset.”

Joyland, which is Pakistan’s contender at the Oscars, was to go on national release on Friday, but was banned over the weekend following pressure from hardline Islamic groups who called the film “repugnant”.

Set in Lahore, the film tells the story of Haider, a married man who joins a dance troupe and falls in love with the lead transgender dancer, Biba, played by Khan.

Khan told the Guardian she adores Biba.

A poster for Joyland, designed by the Pakistani artist Salman Toor. 

Photograph: Courtesy of Alina Khan

“She’s a badass, strong-willed, fiercely independent, dominating, outspoken woman, everything that I am not; I loved the role I played,” said Khan. When she was offered the role, she was relieved not to play an “oppressed” character “which is the life for most transgenders in Pakistan”.

Khan said she was rejected by her family when she came out as trans. “My family did not accept me, but neither did society.” She was told she embarrassed relatives, and her mother was constantly angry with her. “She would tell me not to make exaggerated hand gestures like a woman while talking, to sit like a boy and not be in the company of girls,” said Khan. Her siblings called her khusra – a derogatory term, which was originally used to refer to eunuchs but is also a slur against trans people. But as Khan said: “I had never met a transgender [person] in my life so did not know what they were like.”

Joyland has been hailed on the festival circuit. It was the first Pakistani film to be selected as an official entry at Cannes in May, winning two festival awards and receiving a standing ovation in a packed Salle Debussy theatre.

“Tears were trickling down my face while I continued smiling. I don’t know whether the tears were of joy, were for all the hard work that I put in, or for my struggles since I was a child and that continue,” said Khan, who made her screen debut in the short film Darling in 2019. “For the first time in my life, I felt my talent preceded my gender, I was given so much respect.”

After such international success, her family welcomed her with open arms. “They accepted me finally. They realised that I was not earning by begging or doing sex work,” she said.

In August Joyland won best film from the subcontinent at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, last month it received the top award at Zagreb’s film festival and it is Pakistan’s entry for best international feature film at next year’s Oscars, which has received the backing of the Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, who joined the film as executive producer.

However, the film had caused controversy at home. Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, a senator in the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party, called Joyland “cultural terrorism” and criticised the government for the “shameless” act of allowing its release. “I condemn it and will use every legal step to stop Joyland’s release,” he said. “Glamourising transgenders in Pakistan, as well as their love affairs, is a direct attack on our beliefs.”

Alina Khan, left, with Joyland’s director Saim Sadiq at the Cannes film festival in May 2022. 

Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

He is spearheading a campaign to repeal the 2018 law that enshrined transgender rights in Pakistan law.

Cancelling the film’s licence, which puts its Oscars’ contention in doubt, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, said: “Written complaints were received that the film contains highly objectionable material which do not conform with the social values and moral standards of our society and is clearly repugnant to the norms of ‘decency and morality’ as laid down in Section 9 of the Motion Picture Ordinance, 1979”.

Shahzadi Rai, a Karachi rights activist, was not surprised by the ban. “Of course this was expected. We’re going towards religious extremism. I think soon Pakistan will become another Afghanistan. The trans community is extremely disappointed in the government for caving in to the pressure of the clerics.”

She added that Alina Khan had “put us up in the mainstream in a good way”.


Kenya bans LGBTQ+ documentary for ‘promoting same-sex marriage’

Lucky Khan, a trans singer, said seeing such a film win awards was awesome. “I’d only seen our community begging on streets, performing dances or in commercial sex work.”

Merub Moiz Awan, a trans woman, tweeted: “Had a cisgender woman or man instead of Alina Khan played the role of a khwajasira dancer, they’d have had no issues with it. But because it’s an actual khwajasira doing so, they have issues. They want khwajasira people to be just begging in the streets.”

The international success of Joyland has brought Alina Khan other film offers. “I would like us to be more visible in showbiz as we are very much part of society, like men, women and children are,” she says, adding: “This film deserves an Oscar … it deserves all the awards out there.

“I hope I have opened doors for others in our community, to pursue their dreams.”

Pakistan film 'Joyland' releases in some cinemas after government overturns ban
Story by Tara Subramaniam • Thursday

Award-winning movie “Joyland” opens in cinemas in parts of Pakistan Friday, after authorities in the South Asian nation overturned a ban imposed following complaints the homegrown film was unsuitable for viewing.

Directed by Saim Sadiq, “Joyland” tells the love story between the youngest son of “a happily patriarchal joint family” and a transgender starlet he meets after secretly joining an erotic dance theater, according to a synopsis on the Cannes Film Festival website.

The storyline appeared too sensitive for the Pakistani government, which last week revoked the movie’s certification after receiving written complaints that it included “highly objectionable material.”

However, government adviser Salman Sufi tweeted Wednesday that the censor board review committee had subsequently cleared the film, with requested edits, adding: “Freedom of speech is fundamental right & should be nourished within ambits of the law.”

The movie was listed for viewing in some theaters across Pakistan on Friday, except in the province of Punjab, where the Informational and Culture Department said it could not be exhibited “in the wake of persistent complaints received from different quarters.”

Related video: Pakistan bans 'Joyland' from domestic release after Islamic groups protest against it  Duration 5:04  View on Watch

As of Thursday evening, the filmmakers had not issued an official statement on the nationwide ban being overturned or the new ban in Punjab.

“Joyland” is the first Pakistani movie to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the unofficial Queer Palm in May. It was then submitted to the Oscars as Pakistan’s official entry for the international feature film award. According to the official Academy rules, it needs to play in theaters for at least seven days before November 30 to qualify for inclusion.

The reversal of the nationwide ban came after public outcry from human rights organizations and prominent Pakistanis including Malala Yousafzai, who is also an executive producer on the film.

In an Instagram post, the movie’s director, Sadiq, urged authorities to reconsider the ban, and one of its stars, Rasti Farooq, said in a post: “I stand by my film, and everything that it says, with every fibre of my being.”

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan released a statement Sunday, condemning the government’s withdrawal of certification for “Joyland” as “rabidly transphobic” and a violation of the movie producers’ right to freedom of expression.

“Pakistan’s audiences have the right to decide what they will watch,” the statement said.

  

CANNES QUEER PALM AWARD

Saim Sadiq's Joyland wins Pakistan's first-ever Cannes honour with Un Certain Regard Jury Prize

This is Pakistan's first-ever competitive entry at Cannes.




Joyland, a Pakistani movie featuring a daring portrait of a transgender dancer in the country, on Friday won the Cannes Queer Palm prize for best LGBT, “queer” or feminist-themed movie, the jury head told AFP. The film also won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard segment.

Joyland by director Saim Sadiq, a tale of sexual revolution, tells the story of the youngest son in a patriarchal family who is expected to produce a baby boy with his wife but joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for the troupe’s director, a trans woman.

It is the first-ever Pakistani competitive entry at the Cannes festival where it is part of the Un Certain Regard segment that focuses on young, innovative cinema talent. Un Certain Regard is a competition focused on art-house films that runs parallel to the main competition, the Palme d'Or, which will be announced on Saturday.

“It’s a very powerful film, that represents everything that we stand for,” jury head, French director Catherine Corsini said.

“Joyland will echo across the world,” Corsini said. “It has strong characters who are both complex and real. Nothing is distorted. We were blown away by this film.”

Joyland beat off several other strong entries, including Close by Belgian director Lukas Dhont and Tchaikovsky’s Wife by Kirill Serebrennikov, both hot contenders for the Cannes Festival’s top award Palme d’Or which will be announced on Saturday.




Joyland left Cannes audiences slack-jawed and admiring and got a standing ovation from the opening night’s crowd.

The film stars Sarwat Gilani, Sania Saeed, Ali Junejo, Alina Khan and Rasti Farooq.“It felt like the hard work that people do, the struggles that we face as artists in Pakistan, they’ve all come to be worth it,” Gilani told Reuters on Tuesday after the standing ovation.

“It’s not just about a love story anymore. It’s about real-time issues, real life issues that we all go through,” she said. “Having a woman, a trans, represent that sector of the society, I think it’s a really good step in the direction where we can say we can write progressive stories.”

Here's what the international press has to say about Pakistani film Joyland

PUBLISHED 24 MAY, 2022

Photo: Saim Sadiq/Instagram


Saim Sadiq’s Joyland, the first Pakistani film to be screened at Cannes, is riding a success high. The selection alone was enough of an achievement but the movie worked its magic and received a standing ovation at the premiere. And the international media has great things to say about it.

Described as a "daring" film, Joyland was picked for the Un Certain Regard category at the film festival. It is the story of an effeminate married man who falls for a transgender woman, which raises the tension between the conventional image his family wants him to fall into and the freedom he discovers to live a life of his choosing.

The movie has gained positive reviews by international publications. Here are some excerpts from those reviews.

Cannes Review: Saim Sadiq’s Joyland — Deadline

"Joyland has a vivid sense of place, created not so much by its geographical backdrop as its characters. There’s an attention to detail in the rituals of daily life, whether it’s family celebrations or the rehearsals of the dance group. Mostly restrained emotionally, this packs an unexpected gut punch towards the end of the film, where it shifts focus to a deserving subject and drops another key character.

Presumably that’s meant to reflect the perspective of the protagonist, though it does leave some stories up in the air. But Joyland remains a thoughtful, well performed and engrossing drama set in a culture that’s shifting, and not always with ease."

To read more, click here.

Joyland: Film Review | Cannes 2022 — The Hollywood Reporter

"Joyland is a family saga, one that Sadiq uses to observe how gender norms constrict, and then asphyxiate, individuals. The Ranas feel trapped — by respectability, by family, by vague notions of honour. Bound by their duty to roles they quietly question, the members of this clan slowly suffer under the weight of obligation and expectations. What happens to them — individually and collectively — is a process that Sadiq’s film chronicles with aching consideration.

As Joyland heads toward its end, the film grows increasingly moving. Secrets and their attendant lies collapse under pressure. The weight of what’s left unsaid strangles interactions. The Ranas can no longer afford to be delusional — their survival depends on it."

To read more, click here.

Joyland Review: A daring queer Pakistani drama about desire — The Indie Wire

"The film’s 4:3 aspect ratio forces them into each other’s orbits in carefully composed tableus, and forces them to exist not just as individuals — whose joys and suppressed sorrows define them in equal measure — but as parts of a larger, fragile social fabric that feels like it could snap at any moment.

The frame moves slowly, if at all, but it always brims with physical and emotional energy; in Joyland, there’s always something in the ether, whether embodied by dazzling displays of light as characters move across stages and club floors, or by breathtaking silences as they begin to figure each other out, and figure out themselves."

To read more, click here.

Joyland: Cannes Review — Screen Daily

"Transgression becomes a means of liberation in Joyland, writer-director Sadiq’s assured first feature which explores the tensions within a Pakistani family enslaved by old-fashioned notions of gender and duty. Sadiq’s screenplay navigates a complex web of secrets and lies, pressures and prejudices to create a soulful human drama intent on challenging narrow minds. Said to be the first Pakistani film to play at Cannes, Joyland should make an emotional connection with audiences on the Croisette and far beyond."

To read more, click here.