Lollywood on partition: surprise departures, anticipated arrivals

ABSTRACT Lollywood, or Lahore-based film industry, rarely explores the uneasy topic of the Partition. Hardly a dozen films could be produced in the last seven decades on the Partition. However, a few Lollywood productions – notably Punjabi-language Kartar Singh (1959) – either exploring the Partition or set in the context of the Partition, have surprisingly departed from business-as-usual and state-sponsored discourses whereby India/Hindu is otherified and villainized. It is even more interesting, this paper notes, that all the productions examined for this study drew huge audiences and were indeed successful ventures in terms of popularity. Hence, the contention of this paper is that Lollywood has reproduced as well as resisted the official narratives on the Partition. Arguably, the Partition in Pakistani films has been delineated in its complexity. Most importantly, these productions approach the plight of women with a humanist viewpoint. Methodologically, this paper establishes its argument through a discourse analysis of four films.