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Sand sans soul

By Sumaira Jajja

KARACHI: The much-awaited documentary, ‘Colours of Sand,’ by Amar Mehboob was screened at the Arts Council Karachi.

The 55-minute documentary took around five years to make and was an attempt to capture the beauty and vastness of Thar with its natural environment being the highlight. Word of mouth publicity by Thardeep Rural Development Programme, the NGO supporting Mehboob’s endeavour, had generated ample interests among many people who were curious to view the documentary and expected it to be a rich portrayal of Thar and its people.

“The documentary is my way of showing the world how rich and colourful this land is. There is so much to Thar, the people, the places, the history but all we know or see in the media is the drought and poverty,” said Mehboob before the show started.

The documentary began with a brief introduction of Thar with its traditional music played in the background. From how the landscape changes to how the people deal with whatever little resources they have, Mehboob tried to capture Thar in a nutshell. However, the attempt proved to be futile as with no storyboard or proper research done on a specific area, the result was a hotchpotch of shots with an incoherent script.

What could have been a vehicle that might have shown the advances that indigenous communities are making or the natural resources that lie buried deep in the granite mountains and cola reserves, turned out to be a half hearted attempt to demystify Thar.

The best bit about the documentary was the narrative by TRDP members about the society in Thar but even their faces were not shown and as a result the running voiceover tended to drag in places.

Talking about the documentary, Suleman, a young filmmaker said, “I came here all excited but when I saw the documentary, I was surprised that it turned out to be nothing great. We did not get to see any characters, I am sure there are people there who could have given some valuable input about their society.”

Questions were raised by the audience members about the documentary by Mehboob said that he showed what he felt and that nothing more could be shown. When this scribe asked him if he felt that the audience reaction was due to the fact that the documentary was jittery, he replied, “Its fine just the way it is.”

With the amount of resources at his hand and the number of years he spent working on his feature, Mehboob could have come up with a gem that captured Thar in its glory. Sadly, what he now has on tape is plenty of sand with no soul.

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