Lollywood influenced by Bollywood

In recent years Pakistani film industry aka Lollywood has been overshadowed and influenced by Indian film industry aka Bollywood.  One of the main reasons for this is that Pakistani TV dramas and serials are extremely popular and watched widely all across the country as well as have a huge audience abroad where urdu/hindi is understood. Lollywood depends on local drama industry in terms of content and sources.  

In 1980s and 90s, when lollywood was in recession, Indian soaps and melodramas started to influence women of Pakistan and crept into our households. As it is all about rating these days, film industry also got influenced by growing popular culture and values of India. Moreover lollywood was emerging from long coma in 2006 during Musharraf’s regime, and revived when he softens the censorship policies and removed the ban on screening Bollywood movies in Pakistan which was in place since 1965. Pakistani artists were cast in the Indian films and gained immense popularity worldwide.

This change has its effects on our cinema content too. The kind of content, cloths, dances, item number etc we show in our movies is all cheap indian copy. It does not reflect Pakistan.

In 60’s and 70’s our cinema was at its golden age. It was addressing social issues, focusing on strong family system and ties, religion, freedom and jihad. Those were reflecting our heritage, social values and traditions. Few producers and directors have realized this issue and are focusing on content to depict local values, problems and positive side of Pakistan through lens.

Sonia Gandhi once said in an interview that India has already won the war against Pakistan since Pakistani youth may not know the names of their own historic personalities but they very well know the names of our Indian actors.

Government of Pakistan has put a ban on airing of Bollywood movies in local cinemas since feb 2019 amid border tensions between both countries. Therefore now is the time to change people’s minds, start afresh and put Pakistan first on world map. Since cinema is a very powerful medium having a massive influence and impact on its audience, Only lollywood can do this and break shackles of Bollywood influence on our young generation.