'Baaji' -

Director: Saqib Malik

Rating: Adults Only (no one under 18 allowed)

Screenplay: Irfan Ahmed Urfi

Cast: Meera, Amna Ilyas, Osman Khalid Butt, Ali Kazmi, Nisho, Mohsin Abbas Haider, Nayyar Ejaz, Mehwish Hayat, Aamir Qureshi, Angeline Malik, Ali Azmat, Mustafa Qureshi, Humayun Saeed, Sania Saeed

Irfan Ahmed Urfi's female-centric screenplay revolves around the relationship between two very different women who bond as friends but jealousy and intrigue shatters their friendship resulting in tragedy..every dream has a price !

A poor but ambitious young woman (Amna Ilyas) -from the 'other side of the tracks' (the old city in Lahore)- by chance becomes an assistant to a glamorous movie queen (Meera) whose popularity is seriously on the wane.

Desperate to regain her position as star, she accepts an offer as the leading lady in a film by a hot new director (Osman Khalid Butt) just returned from America. Both women fall for him leading to a love triangle that wrings itself into a frenzy of lust, longing, desire, treachery and ultimately murder.

Amna Ilyas gives a superbly nuanced performance balancing her two very different lives - as the poor woman living in a cramped house in the old city, who transforms into a confident do-gooder thanks to her new job as friend, confidante and advisor to her rich benefactress ,while living in a huge modern mansion. Lollywood star Meera, making a comeback on the big screen, easily captures the star quality of a famous screen diva, as she moves stealthily across the screen stunningly dressed in high fashion. The entire cast - many appearing in small cameo parts - provide superb support to the two main characters. The film incorporates two memorable classic songs - ''Yeh Aaj Mujh Ko Kya Hua'' & ''Oh, Don't be Silly' - giving them a modern upbeat tempo.

The film's most memorable moment comes during the rap ''item'' number - ''Gangster Guriya'' - danced by actress-singer Mehwish Hayat, while many famous Pakistani celebrities from the world of fashion, music, television and cinema make cameo appearances.

Saqib Malik, a long-time movie buff and a successful director of music videos, makes his celebrated debut as a film director. The plot incorporates many vivid movie-going memories from past films and superbly placed contemporary Pakistani pop culture. The film has been recognised at numerous International film festivals and some of the top Award platforms in Pakistan.

Non- Members: For further information contact ASG Office: 051-2802343 Thursday- Saturday : 11 am- 2 pm

Duration: 2 hr 5 min

Director: Guy Hamilton

Screenplay: Richard Maibaum & Tom Mankiewicz, based on the novel by Ian Fleming

Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Maud Adams, Herve Villechaize, Clifton James, Richard Loo, Soon-Tek Oh, Marc Lawrence, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, James Cossins,

This ninth screen outing of James Bond is set in the face of the 1973 energy crisis when OAPEC, led by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, proclaimed an oil embargo targeting nations (among them Britain and the United States) that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

Bond is sent to retrieve the Solex Agitator, a breakthrough technological solution to contemporary energy shortages, which has been stolen by the dwarf henchman (Herve Villechaize) of the enigmatic assassin, Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), who is also known as the ''Man with the Golden Gun'', and can only be recognized by the three nipples on his chest. Bond and Scaramanga finally come face-to-face during the climactic duel involving a golden bullet.

The film reflects the then-popular martial arts film craze, with several kung fu action set pieces and a predominantly Asian location, being set in Thailand, Hong Kong and Macau.

Please Note:

The film starts at 6.30 pm sharp. No entries after doors close. Please switch off mobiles before entry, Limited seating.

For further information contact ASG Office Thurs-Sat: 051 2802343, e-mail: asianstudyg@gmail.com/ Online: asianstudygroup.org

Director: Terence Young

Screenplay: Richard Maibaum & Berkely Mather, based on the novel by Ian Fleming

Cast: Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Pedro Armendariz, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Bernard Lee, Eunice Gayson, Walter Gotell, Lois Maxwell

BAFTA Award: Ted Moore for Cinematography

Second in the long-running series of spy films based on Ian Fleming's pulp novels about the exploits of British Secret Service agent James Bond with code name 007.

In this episode Bond (Sean Connery) is sent to assist in the defection of a Soviet consulate clerk (Daniela Bianchi) in Turkey, where the international organization SPECTRE plans to avenge Bond's killing of one of their evil agents. Helping him in the mission is his counterpart (Pedro Armendariz) in Turkey while the antagonists trying to kill them are the highly feared Soviet counter-intelligence high ranking agent Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) and her trained assassin (Robert Shaw).

Spectacular action set pieces, the exotic locations in Istanbul, the famous Bond music theme and the colourful characters all combine to make this one of the best Bond films.

• In collaboration with Serena Hotel, Islamabad

For further information contact ASG Office Thurs-Sat: 051 2802343, e-mail: asianstudyg@gmail.com/ Online: asianstudygroup.org

Duration: 1 hr 35 min

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami

Cast: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi, Mir Hossein Noori, Elham Imani, Ahmad Ansari

Award: Cannes Film Festival - Palme d'Or

This is a film with a meditative beat to it as the story unfolds in a deliberately slow but piercing manner. It is a simple, serene and occasionally humourous film about a subject that is complex, emotional but usually treated with solemnity!

An affluent man (Homayoun Ershadi) drives around the outskirts of Tehran in a Ranger Rover looking for a stranger to whom he offers a fee to perform a shocking function. The driver interviews a security guard who gathers and sells plastic bags, a timid Kurdish soldier, an Afghan seminarian who quotes from the Quran, and finally an old Turkish taxidermist. Initially it is not made clear what the driver wants done and gradually we discover what his requirement is. The men talk and in the talking, as well as in the eloquent silences, life takes on precious appeal.

The film's leisurely shots of the driver's car twisting through the wastelands outside Tehran, crisscrossing a barren industrial landscape of construction sites and shanty towns initially has a harsh effect which gradually segues to a landscape that becomes green with foliage and which takes on a soothing effect reflecting the various moods of the driver as we get totally caught up in the protagonist's psychological and ethical dilemma.

Director: Yojiro Takita

Screenplay: Kundo Koyama

Cast: Masahiro Motoki, Tsutimu Yamazaki, Ryoko Hirosue, Kazuko Yoshlyuki

Award: Academy Award for Best Foreign Film

A film with such a theme was deemed to be a disaster at the box office. However, the film went on to win many awards!

A young married man returns to his hometown after unsuccessfully wanting to excel at being a cellist. He finds an advertisement for a job "assisting departures". Assuming it to be a job in a travel agency, he goes to the interview and learns that he will be preparing bodies for cremation in a ceremony known as encoffinment. Though reluctant, he is hired on the spot and receives a cash advance. The Japanese stigma against people working with dead bodies makes him ashamed about the job and hides the true nature of it from his wife. Over time, he becomes comfortable with his profession and completes a number of assignments while experiencing the gratitude of the families of the deceased. When he hears about his estranged father's death he is at first angry and refuses to deal with his father's body. However, he relents and insists on dressing the body for the funeral himself.

The film's foremost theme focuses mainly on the humanity that death brings to the surface and how it strengthens family bonds.

The subject of 'encoffinment' was a highly unusual subject for a Japanese film. The term denotes the preparation of the body of a deceased person and placement of it in a coffin, especially in a ceremonial or ritualistic manner. Despite the importance of death rituals in traditional Japanese culture the subject is considered unclean as everything related to death is thought to be a source of defilement. After coming into contact with the dead, individuals must cleanse themselves through purifying rituals. People who work closely with the dead, such as morticians, are thus considered unclean, and during the feudal era ,those whose work was related to death became untouchables and forced to live in their own hamlets and were discriminated against by wider society. Despite a cultural shift in the last hundred years or so, the stigma of death still has considerable force within Japanese society, and discrimination against the untouchables has continued.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami

Cast: Mania Akbari, Amina Maher, Kamran Adl, Roya Akbari, Roya, Arabshahi, Amene Moradi, Mandana Sharbaf, Katayoun Taleizadeh

Abbas Kiarostami, often called Iran's greatest filmmaker, is fond of stripping personalities bare through conversations they have while riding in cars!The entire film almost seems like a documentary and is filmed with a dashboard camera whose focus rarely leaves the taxi's front seat. This is a rare chance for viewers to eavesdrop on everyday talk in Tehran that, although fictionalized, must approximate what really happens in Iran's busy capital.

In this film he pushes his favourite dramatic device to its limit as he fills a whole movie with close-ups of a smart, independent-minded Tehran woman and a series of passengers in her front seat including her sister, a religious old woman, a prostitute, and her pre-teen son.

The mercurial taxi driver turns her position into a platform from which she can rage. She is angry at her ex-husband, whom she divorced. She's volatile with her young son, who is equally on edge with her. She's philosophical and inquisitive with riders, all of whom (except for her son) are women. These are private moments on the streets of Tehran where every subject is discussed, including sex and desire...

Director: Rob Marshall

Screenplay: Robin Swicord, based on the novel by Arthur Golden

Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li, Tsai Chin, Suzuka Ohgo, Togo Igawa, Mako, Samantha Futerman, Elizabeth Sung

Academy Awards: Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design

Screen Actors Guild Nomination: Best Actress (Ziyi Zhang)

The film is a feast for the eyes with superb cinematography, costume and production design and a score by John Williams and cello solos by the great Yo-Yo Ma.

A sumptuously faithful and evocative film adaptation of Arthur Golden's celebrated novel tells the story of a young Japanese girl who is sold by her impoverished family to a geisha house to support them by training as and eventually becoming a geisha. The film centers around the sacrifices and hardships faced by pre-World War II geisha, and the challenges posed by the war and a modernizing world to geisha society.

The story is told exclusively from the point of view of the titular geisha (Ziyi Zhang). We see her life from a poverty stricken child to her years spent in servitude, her training and emergence as a geisha, her brief reign that is interrupted by the war, and her re-emergence as a geisha. Along the way she faces kindness from a handsome businessman (Ken Watanabe), bitter opposition from a rival (Gong Li) at the geisha house, and strict but loving training by a veteran geisha (Michelle Yeoh).

Director: Zhang Yimou

Screenplay: Wei Lu, based on the novel by Hua Yu

Cast: You Ge, Gong Li, Ben Niu, Wu Jiang, Denf Fei, Tao Guo,

Awards: Cannes Film Festival: Grand Jury Prize (Zhang Yimou) & Best Actor (You Ge)

A spirited melodramatic epic that covers three decades of Chinese history from the 1940s...

The film is seen through the eyes of an average couple who undergo tremendous personal changes in their life because of the changing political situation in their country. During the 1940s the wastrel son (You Ge) of a rich merchant gambles away the family fortune and loses the valued family mansion. His father dies of grief and his wife (Gong Li) becomes a beggar with her adolescent daughter and baby son. The family is reunited when he swears off gambling but he gets caught up in the civil war between Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalists and the winning Mao Zedong's communists. He survives the horrors of the battlefield and upon returning home learns that his impoverished daughter has lost her voice and the family has to learn to survive anew amongst the harshness of the new Communist regime. The family remains hopeful despite bizarre twists and tragic losses as they simply want to live and don't really care about the politics they are surrounded by...

A MUST WATCH!

An ongoing revival of Pakistani Cinema

Subtitled

Director: Asim Abbasi

Screenplay: Asim Abbasi

Lux Style Awards: Nominations for Best Actor (Mohammad Ahmad), Best Actor (Adnan Malik), Best Actress (Aamina Sheikh), Best Actress (Sanam Saeed)

Cast: Aamina Sheikh, Sanam Saeed, Adnan Malik, Mohammad Ahmad, Beo Raana Zafar, Faris Khalid, Hira Hussain, Mikaal Zulfiqar, Bob D'Erlanger

The film explores the bittersweet and sometimes toxic relationships within a dysfunctional family. Set in a milieu of a contemporary Sindhi family living in Karachi, the film narrates the life of middle child (Aamina Sheikh) who lives and takes care of her aging and unwell parents and her reaction to the arrival from abroad of her elder brother (Faris Khalid) and younger sister (Sanam Saeed) amidst a family emergency...

A Pandora's Box of family secrets emerge as long-simmering sibling rivalries come to the surface and cracks between the family members begin to show. An eventful anniversary party threatens to destroy whatever little relationship still exists between the siblings but is averted just in time.

The perceptive screenplay brings a fresh outlook to what could have been a maudlin set of events. Real-life situations like parents growing old, family responsibilities becoming one's own problems, tackling an inter-religious relationship when one of the daughters gets involved with her father's Christian nurse (Adnan Malik) are just some of the issues on view which are acted to perfection by the entire cast.

Not only is the film visually well-put-together, the prominent soundtrack showcases contemporary Pakistani songs that accentuate pivotal scenes and emphasize the cultural significance of certain ceremonies that take place in the film.

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Screenplay: Asghar Farhadi

Award: Cannes Film Festival – Best Actress (Bernice Bejo)

Cast: Berenice Bejo, Ali Mosaffa, Tahar Rahim, Pauline Burlet, Elyes Aguis, Jeanne Jestin, Sabrina Ouazani, Babak Karimi

Like Farhadi’s previous film (“A Separation”) this one also confirms his unique ability to explore how constant chatter and anguished outbursts obscure the capacity for honest communication. This story is secretly like a detective mystery about relationships only partially understood by their participants.

Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) arrives in Paris from his native Iran four years after separating from his French wife Marie (Berenice Bejo) in order to finalize their divorce. He finds the family at an uneven crossroads: While Marie plans to marry Samir (Tahar Rahim), her daughter Lucie (Pauline Burlet) from an earlier marriage maintains distance from her mother as she is frustrated by the older woman’s string of fleeting romances. Meanwhile, she must contend with the presence of preadolescent Fouad (Elys Aguis), Samir’s son, who lives with the family in the suburbs while Samir works in the city. Ahmad uncovers its most troublesome aspect through casual discussion: Samir’s wife lies comatose in a hospital after a botched suicide attempt.

The screenplay slowly reveals its puzzle pieces exposing troubled people trapped by a network of errors and tragedy in this wrenching, relentlessly intelligent drama..