Change Your Image
urban_djinn
Reviews
Kashf: The Lifting of the Veil (2008)
fascinating and original, genre-bending film-making
Kashf is a fascinating exploration of questions of destiny, and takes us into the worlds of Sufism and Lollywood dreams.
I especially liked the style of it - it felt very fresh, raw, original. Shot in 28 days on a very low budget, the result is a genre-bending fusion of camcorder documentary, Lollywood cinema, and 'conventional' film crew work (although the crew later appear on screen as cinema audience!).
With dream sequences and hallucinations, magic realism is a strong element - reality is explored through apparent non-reality, and the physical and metaphysical merge. A most interesting aspect of this upturning and unveiling is Director turns Actor, as Ayesha Khan literally melds onto the screen and becomes a major presence in its landscape.
As the pull on our hero towards his spiritual destination becomes irresistibly and irreversibly stronger, he is told: "you have to acknowledge you're on the path." This film is about facing up to destiny, and meeting it, and is about the quest we each face to find out who we are and why we are here.
I enjoyed that it took me to the streets and doors - and sometimes behind those doors - of Lahore (the green door is a strong motif in the film).
This is a really wonderful film and adds something original and new (and brave) to film work in Pakistan and beyond.