Shaan Shahid’s key to longevity

Shaan Shahid is easily the only Pakistani actor who has seen good old Lollywood through its highs and lows. He hasn’t just survived but also managed to stay relevant in today’s revamped industry by adopting new trends — be it in filmmaking (he produces and directs movies also), or in his personal style — while most of his peers have long become redundant or vanished into oblivion.

Consider the younger Babar Ali and Moammar Rana, for instance, who were at one time — back in the 1990s — his arch competitors but they are nowhere in the reckoning now, while Shahid recently gave Pakistan its biggest money-spinner of all time in Waar. His fan following is not just confined to the ‘multiplex audience,’ as they say; his films have done well in single screens at less posh sites, too.

Shahid has some bankable projects coming up, such as Arth — The Destination and Zarrar. Incidentally, both are his home productions, and he’s also directing and starring in these films. Another fact common to these films is that they have been mounted on lavish budgets. Besides, they have been shot on international locations — chiefly London and Istanbul — and have the same DoP, the UK-based Timothy Hallam Wood.

Arth shall be the first to come out. And, judging from the trailer and the video of the Rahat Fateh Ali song Sanwaar De Khudaya, which was released last week, the film looks uber stylish. It is touted to be an “official remake” of Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt’s 1982 semi-autobiographical Arth, except that it is “set in another country and in a different era” (to quote leading lady Uzma Hasan, who gets to essay the role famously portrayed by Shabana Azmi in the original).

Shahid slips into the character of the struggling singer that was played by Raj Kiran, while Humaima Malik is the sexy starlet infatuated with the married film director Mohib Mirza. It’s decidedly a glammed-up version of the Bhatt film.

Shahid was in England early this month, where he completed the colour-grading and sound mixing of the film at London’s famous Pinewood Studios. The result is for all to see.