March 23, 2011

NEW YORK – Global humanitarian agency Church World Service and its Pakistan partner, media production company the Interactive Resource Center (IRC), today paid tribute to gifted young Pakistani filmmaker Nisar Ahmed for his direction of the documentary "Burning Paradise," awarded a special jury mention in India's Alpaviram 2011 South Asian Short and Documentary Film Festival.

The Alpaviram festival, hosted February 18-20 by the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad, India, honored the 22-minute documentary for its courageous depiction of the human cost of conflict in Pakistan's Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province during the 2009 violence that internally displaced more than a million people from the region.

"Burning Paradise," directed by Nisar, was conceived by Muhammad Waseem, executive director of the Lahore-based Interactive Resource Center.

Nisar, who works with IRC and is from Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan area, entered another film in the Alpaviram competition, "Cinema Making Peace." Ironically, Ahmed and other Pakistani film students with entries in the festival were denied visas by the Indian government to attend the event.

Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan is partner with IRC in its innovative new interactive community television network project Maati TV (http://maati.tv/beta/). "We are extraordinarily pleased that "Burning Paradise" and Nisar have been so honored, said Maurice A, Bloem, Church World Service deputy director and head of programs.

"Nisar's artistic eye is at the same time unblinking and compassionate," Bloem said. "He embodies the spirit, courage and creativity that IRC and Church World Service hope to encourage through the medium of Maati TV among Pakistani youth and other community members."

In a February interview with the Bangalore Mirror about the award, documentary director Nisar said, "We all were very excited about attending Alpaviram. But the Indian embassy denied us visa due to security reasons. We are creative people who wanted to be in India to experience Indian cinema.

"We will now have to console ourselves with the fact that our films were short-listed. We hope Indians will get to know and appreciate our country through our films. Such festivals are a great platform to promote peace and cultural diversity."

"Burning Paradise," filmed in Pashto and Urdu with English subtitles, can be seen on Maati TV (in three parts) at: http://www.maati.tv/beta/burning-paradise/.

Four documentaries and one fictional film by Pakistan film artists were screened at Alpaviram 2011, among the 31 finalist fiction and documentary films selected for the competition, from entries from Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and other South-Asian nations.

A project of IRC, CWS in Pakistan/Afghanistan and South Asian Partnership Pakistan, the Maati TV channel (Music Art and Technology Informatrix), engages youth and communities interactively, using television and videography as a medium to express the issues they face. Providing training and hand-held video cameras, Maati offers young correspondents in 20 districts of Pakistan an outlet to produce and share social and development stories. Maati is now collaborating with universities in the region.

Supporters of the Maati TV initiative include Church Development Service (Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst), an association of the Protestant Churches in Germany, CMC (Centraal Missie Commissariaat), the Catholic missionary development organization based in the Netherlands, and Misereor, the German Catholic Bishops' Organization for Development Cooperation.

Although there is currently no television channel in Pakistan to air documentaries, posting the channel's news and programs to YouTube provides a venue potentially for millions, v ia the Internet.

Church World Service