THE Holy Warrior and the Enemy (1958-2008): Film, Newsmedia, and Music in Frontline Pakistan` was one of the most intriguing sessions at the LLF. Journalist and film-maker Hasan Zaidi started the talk by explaining the reason behind having a session on cinema in a literary festival. He said that it was important to look at mediums other than books and that cinema is a unique medium combing the art of seeing, writing and singing that has never been taken seriously in Pakistan, which is why there hasn`t been any contextualised reading of cinema as a significant genre that reflects our collective memory.

Zaidi was joined by Hameed Haroon of the Dawn Media Group and a Q&A between the two followed along with a presentation of clips from different Pakistani films, jihadi videos and electronic-media programmes. Haroon discussed the theme of the holy warrior in Pakistani cinema in a historical context, saying that the disillusionment of living in a postcolonial society led to the search for a messiah figure in early films. Film creators captured the general discontent in society and most early films in Pakistan talked indirectly about social and political issues. For instance, Khalil Qaiser`s film Shaheed was apparently about oil imperialism as well as about Pakistani society at the time.

There were attempts at promoting the image of a soldier messiah in the reign of Ayub Khan when songs by Noorjehan and Naseem Begum further strengthened the nationalist sentiments. However, the emotions of these singers were genuine and should not be confused with the state`s promotion of a certainideology, Haroon argued. For the army to be the holy warrior they need an enemy like India. In 1965, Lakhon Main Ek was released, showing a Hindu-Kashmiri girl falling in love with a Muslim-Kashmiri boy.

In Ziaul Haq`s era, religious imagery was strengthened and a clip from the movie The Blood of Hussain was shown to corroborate that point. Zaidi and Haroon also discussed the film International Gorilay, which shows the protagonists (holy warriors)in the heightened religious context of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

Next, two films about Daniel Pearl`s murder, The Journalist and the Jihadi (a documentary ) and Infinite Justice (a much better film than the Hollywood one starring Angelina Jolie, in Haroon`s opinion) were discussed to analyse the post-9/11 concept of the holy warrior. The transition is complete as the holy warrior has become a ruthless executioner as shown in the first film, whereas he is portrayed as much more nuanced and doubtful, but an executioner nonetheless, in the latter.

The next part of the session focused on the electronic media in the last years of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf`s regime and on two state-supported films, Jamil Dehlavi`s Jinnah and Shoaib Mansoor`s Khuda Kay Liay, which were attempts to salvage the idea of the messiah from the extremist jihadis.

In answer to a question from the audience regarding the future of cinema in Pakistan, Haroon said he is quite pessimistic as it seems that jihadi execution footage has replaced film. He also expressed his reservations about the potential of the news media and the improbability of television (TV drama, in particular) replacing film as a genre. E