Khajistan Acquires Three Rare Pakistani Telefilms from the Early 2000s

Khajistan is pleased to announce the acquisition, restoration and institutional release of three rare Pakistani telefilms by filmmakers Bilal Hasan Minto and Faisal Rehman: World Ka Center (2002), Javaid Shampoo (2004) and Kali Shalwar (2007). These works, long considered inaccessible, have been licensed directly from Turun Talky, the now defunct production company established by the filmmakers, and have been digitized and subtitled from the original DV tapes that remained largely unseen for more than two decades.

Produced during Pakistan’s early-2000s media liberalization under General Pervez Musharraf, these films represent a short but potent period of independent TV cinema that aired briefly, circulated informally and then disappeared from public reach. Their recovery preserves a vital record of the country’s cultural, political and televisual imagination.

World Ka Center (2002)

A slow, atmospheric telefilm set in Lahore on September 11, 2001. The story follows a group of lower-middle-class men — one holding a flight ticket to the United States — as they spend a final day of camaraderie before the night’s unfolding global catastrophe. The film drifts between drinking, blue-film screenings, and police encounters, while parallel domestic storylines depict a young woman immersed in Urdu digests and FM radio and a house wife searching for Bollywood VCDs.

Themes: Homosociality, desire, surveillance, class precarity, media consumption, the porousness of global events.

Javaid Shampoo (2004)

Adapted from the world of Saadat Hasan Manto, the film centers on Javaid, whose family manufactures counterfeit shampoo brands in Lahore’s informal economy. Javaid dreams of escape — show business, militancy in Kashmir, anything that might lift him from the gravity of class and circumstance. Set during an upper-class celebration, the telefilm skewers aspiration, American influence, commodity culture and the illusions of upward mobility.

Themes: Counterfeit economies, masculinity, class mobility, commodity desire, Manto’s critique of hypocrisy.

Kali Shalwar (2007)

A textured adaptation of Manto’s classic short story, following Sultana, a sex worker struggling to afford a simple black shalwar for Muharram. Her search becomes a portrait of survival in a city that renders women like her disposable.

Themes: Poverty, female dignity, urban displacement, religious ritual, loneliness, gendered precarity.

This trio offers a rare lens into Pakistan’s televisual and cultural landscape during a period when private broadcasters were newly emerging and censorship operated through silence, omission and self-regulation. The films depict worlds structured by class, desire, surveillance, aspiration and intimate interiority — worlds that have rarely been archived.

Their restoration expands Khajistan’s mission to preserve endangered and suppressed histories from the Indus, Khorasan, Persia, and Arabia regions.

The films are now available to universities, museums and libraries through Khajistan Releasing as Digital Site Licenses (DSL). For acquisition inquiries, please contact:
info@khajistan.com