KARACHI: In the early ’90s, Pakistani television operated under strict limitations: two channels, PTV and NTM, prime-time slots dictated by state-owned networks, and increasing restrictions on cigarette advertising. Yet, within these confines, some commercials managed to transcend their purpose, becoming cultural artifacts rather than mere marketing ploys. One such anomaly …
KARACHI: Sindhi language theatre has gone through many phases over the centuries. While the earliest forms of theatre included oral storytelling and group dance routines and date back to twelfth and fourteenth centuries, historians acknowledge that the first modern Sindhi play was Laila Majnu by Mirza Qaleech Baig in 1880. Since …
KARACHI: If you were to chart Bilal Maqsood’s trajectory in Pakistani music, it would map the soundtracks of a generation. As one half of the pop rock band Strings (with Faisal Kapadia), he helped define a collective sense of longing, nostalgia, and the complexities of love, drawing millions to his …
KARACHI: Before Richard Siken and his puzzling yet seemingly boundless availability to answer fans’ most banal queries on X, there was Neil Gaiman on Twitter. Goodreads. Tumblr. Reddit – though one only hoped so. He engaged with the digital world like a man who had discovered an entirely new stage …
KARACHI: It was 1966, when colour films were still a novelty, that Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky famously dismissed them as a “commercial gimmick.” For Tarkovsky, whose cinematic language flourished in the quiet, monochromatic worlds of Stalker and Nostalgia, the use of colour on screen was an extraordinary, almost otherworldly choice …