Creating Magic For The Audience - An Interview with Afia Serena Nathaniel

Many years ago as a young college graduate in Lahore, Afia Serena Nathaniel was faced with the onerous choice to either join a prestigious software firm and earn lots of money or risk becoming an artist and do something different and meaningful in her society. Willfully she chose to do the latter.

She chose to become a filmmaker. ‘I have chosen to make films because if we are not going to tell our stories to the rest of the world, no one else is going to do it for us. I have chosen to tell stories about a country which has made headlines for all the wrong reasons and remains largely misunderstood’, she says. As an internationally acclaimed filmmaker today, Afia hopes to bridge ‘the cinematic divide between Pakistan and the rest of the world’ through her work. ‘Cinema has a way of bridging the divide that exists between Pakistan and the rest of the world,’ Afia says. ‘This is especially relevant in a post 9-11 world where there is a need to understand our worlds so different, so divided and so devoid of tolerance’.

It is for this reason perhaps Afia has chosen to remain independent of commercial cinema, independent of Hollywood, because she believes that one cannot tell stories honestly when money-making is the foremost goal. Afia passionately decries what she calls the Hollywood syndrome which ‘manufactures dreams and sells it to us everyday’. ‘It tells us what to think, how to think and also how not to think. So far we have seen the Americans make films about themselves and just about everyone else. The West has been continuously imposing its views on the East and in its control of the media; it has cast the world into stereotypes’, she says. ‘And a change is desperately needed because in a world where gap between rhetoric and reality is widening, the lesser heard voices in the world are bursting with stories to tell’.

Any change begins with a simple idea, Afia believes. ‘Those who can present ideas are in a unique position to effect change in their societies, ‘she says. ‘To me social change in cinema is about bringing realism to our stories and inspiring dialogue in the society you live. Art cannot exist in a vacuum; therefore, artists have a big responsibility to their society’. Although Afia is based in New York now, her roots in Pakistan clearly continue to reflect in her work. Her first film “Nadah” was set in the walled city of Lahore. It’s the story of an eleven year old girl who wants to play cricket. Her second short was an adaptation of Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh” and the third film “Muntazir”, a co-production between US and Pakistan, is about a story of love and loss’. Afia looks for inspiration in mundane, everyday subjects. ‘Ordinary people have extraordinary stories to tell. This is what motivates me to tell their stories’, she says.

Infact Afia’s own story seems nothing short of extraordinary. After completing her elementary education from the Lahore Convent, Afia graduated from Kinnaird College with a BSc in Mathematics and Physics ‘Since I always scored highly in science, I naturally ended up doing science. My goal back then was to get into AI (Artificial Intelligence) so I went to LUMS to do my BSc in Computer Science. During my time at LUMS, I realized that it means one thing to be just good at something you can do and another thing for something that is your passion. My passion had always been writing and storytelling since childhood’. Since there were no film schools or film programs in the country, Afia then ended up as a copywriter at an advertising agency.

Two years later, Afia landed a job at the World YWCA in Switzerland where she worked as a Communications Manager for their first international endowment campaign. (It would be also worthy to note that Afia is Pakistan’s first independent female filmmaker from a minority background). Her work in Geneva consequently opened new vistas for her. ‘It was while living in Geneva and immersing myself in traveling and photography, I realized I really needed to take up filmmaking full-time’, she says. ‘So I taught myself screenwriting, got accepted at Columbia University’s prestigious Masters in Film Directing and was awarded the Dean’s scholarship for two years. My passion for storytelling had finally found the right place’. And from then onwards there’s been no looking back for her.

Among the many accolades that she has received for her work are the Ezra Litwak Distinction in Screenwriting, IFP Market Best Screenplay and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association award. Her screenplay "Neither the Veil, nor the Four Walls" was a semi-finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship in 2008.
Her thesis film as a writer-director and producer "Long After" starring Tillotama Shome (of the Monsoon Wedding fame) and Ayad Akhtar (The War Within) was a recipient of the prestigious HBO Development Award, Milos Forman Finishing Fund and a post-production grant from the Caucus For Television Producers, Writers & Directors Foundation. Afia's short films have garnered critical acclaim at various international and Asian American festivals, including, Rotterdam, Toronto and Montreal. Her directorial debut ‘Nadah’ was nominated for the Golden Reel Award in Los Angeles together with her screenwriting debut of "Butterfly", which also went on to secure the Best Film at Napa Valley, Ivy League and Lyon film festivals. The UK magazine TRACE recently described Afia as "one of the best young minority filmmakers working today" in the US.

Afia is very upbeat about the future prospects for cinema in Pakistan and considers this to be a very exciting time for independent filmmakers in Pakistan. ‘Credit goes to filmmakers like Shoaib Mansoor for giving us ‘Khuda key liye’ and more recently Mehreen Jabbar’s ‘Ramchand Pakistani’. It’s wonderful to see families go back to cinema and enjoy watching a meaningful story onscreen. It is even more wonderful to witness this revival in an international setting where films like these have audiences who want to see stories from Pakistan’, she says. When I ask her if the emerging Pakistani cinema has the space or the capability to create its own niche under the shadows of the Indian cinema, she seems very confident that this new wave of filmmaking in Pakistan is creating its own space globally and is clearly different from mainstream Bollywood. Afia also supports the recent reversal on the ban on showing Indian films, saying ‘Competition is always good. When you open the doors for a foreign film to compete with a local film you are raising the bar on the quality of the product. I believe this is going to be good in the long run for our dying commercial film industry and give a boost to our nascent independent filmmaking’.

All this is very heartening to hear but is the Pakistani audience is mature enough and ready to move beyond the formula films with the song and dance numbers that the South Asian society in general seems to have a great appetite for? ‘I think audiences in Pakistan are ready to deal with realism’, Afia says. ‘I believe that you have the power to create the audiences you want. This is because audiences are not the passive recipients we make them out to be but active participants.’ Afia points out that there will always be films that are created only to entertain and then there are films that can inform, educate, inspire, as well as, entertain. ‘A film like “Khuda key liye” strikes at the very heart of an ongoing debate in the country and portrayed it very realistically. I think Shoaib Mansoor has done a tremendous and brave thing by making this film. Debate is good. It opens up the possibility of dialogue. It is better than burying your head in the sand’.

The absence of institutions has played a major part in the decay of performed arts in Pakistan, needless to say. So I ask Afia if this new generation of independent filmmakers like her have any plans to contribute in this regard.’ It is my hope that once I make my first feature film in Pakistan, I am able to create a film fund for films to be shot in Pakistan’, she says. ‘There is a lot of talent in Pakistan and I hate to see it wasted because we lack the institutional support. If you look at the European independent filmmaking and see how it’s thriving, it is because at a very local level there is fiscal support and subsidies for local artists, especially, filmmakers. In the same way we must create and support opportunities for independent filmmakers here’.

Afia has recently launched her production company, Zambeel Films. For those of us who don’t really get the significance behind the name, Afia explains, ‘You probably remember the stories of Umru-Ayyar and the magic bag “Zambeel” which could make wishes come true. Well, that’s what my work is all about - creating magic for an audience’. Afia is currently working on a couple of projects, one of them a feature film set in present day Pakistan. ‘It’s a road trip film where a couple of characters all hop along in car or truck and film their road trip experience. My dream project though is a sci-fi thriller that I am dying to write and direct. Maybe in ten years, you’ll see it on the big screen’. In all likelihood, this self-described writer-scientist-activist, who is part filmmaker, part magician will work her magic to make it happen.

In the meanwhile Afia will let her work lead her. ‘I go wherever my stories take me’, she says. ’I hope to continue to explore the boundaries of storytelling and explore cinema as an extraordinary experience which has the capacity to not only entertain us but to also challenge us, inspire us and forever change us.’