I am Slackistan or am I?

Lets go back three years to my second year of University in Toronto. Friends back home told me about Slackistan. While being a major of Fine Art Cultural Studies at the time this was a hot topic. Seeing pre-production photo shoots and what not fueled a fiery curiosity. Pushing forward to the present, Slackistan among many other similar projects of such nature are put under scrutiny and held accountable to represent a particular anything. Everything is questioned: Who made it? Who was in it? What were the reasons behind choosing that certain language? Biographies are microscopically analyzed and the skeleton is examined. This cultural analysis is tried and tested but what lay beyond the burden of representation and its execution. For me, the film attempted to find a balance between blending abstractions of a physical space in order to create a transitory cloud above the city known as Islamabad. Islamabad in actuality is a transitory space, people here can say they are from Islamabad but what does that really mean?

Islamabad has to be reclaimed and the film touched upon this issue in a light that was idealistic. Would you rather a self-critical mirror be held up against each and every individual and the fact is that is exactly what the title Slackistan did for me. It was a mirror held up against what I knew and had experienced of Islamabad. Surely, optimism isn’t a weak element when used to end a film. This film is shot in a docudrama style with humor/relaxed conversation putting its audiences in a place where you sat back and watched everyday life. Choosing to incoporate cultural elements significant to certain segments of society do not overrule the underlying message, which examines our present post-colonial identity crisis.

My humble suggestion for those that read reviews is not to judge a book by its cover and in this case not even by what you “know of” the entire production (and where they work and who they hangout with, heh). Islamabad has a mood depicted through passing by roads and street signs in the film. Everyday life translated as an art form has been a challenge since the 1920s modern art paradigm shift. Filming the contemporarization of “Islamabadi” everyday life is a welcome change and should be seen more as an initiative rather than just entertainment. 


Slackistan Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk1RsdfDzZk