The filmy rise and fall of Lahore's Bari Studios report

Built in the early 1950s by producer Malik Bari, Bari Studios was where many a hit Lollywood film was shot. The studio housed multiple halls, studio rooms, film sets, a laboratory and all the necessary equipment for filming and post-production. Today, its walls are crumbling. But as they are, they’re also telling tales of a heyday that’s difficult to reminisce without wistful nostalgia.
Malik Akbar is one such bastion of nostalgia. Identifying himself as an ‘extra supplier’, Akbar loses no time in getting to his sales pitch. He tells us he can arrange any extra or background actor needed for a film — from eight to 80 years, any body type, man or woman.
He himself has been an extra in many films. He enthusiastically recalls playing a small role in the film Malangi (1965) during which he gets bludgeoned on the head. He stumbles a little as he enacts the impact of the strike on him. It is not difficult to imagine him as an entertainer
Like Bari Studios, Akbar’s best days are behind him. He now narrates how some of the biggest actors he worked with did not hear his plea for financial help when his daughters were getting married. But then, Akbar has nine children: five daughters and four sons.
Once occupied solely by film production offices, dressmakers and other celluloid-related professions, the rooms in this building now also house warehouses for food-manufacturing companies. Access to the top of the tower seen in the centre of the building has been blocked by a concrete wall erected on one flight of stairs and a padlocked door on another. — All photos by Nad-i-Ali
Bari Studios was a village before it was a film set. And not everyone was pleased with the takeover, with at least one posthumous protester. After the studio was built and filming started within its premises, strange things started happening. Akbar recalls Sultan Rahi shooting for a film whose title he doesn’t remember. The actor was tied up to a tree but for some reason couldn’t climb down even after the shot was over — as if a supernatural force was keeping him up there. Others say a wedding procession was being filmed when the girl playing the bride suddenly fell off her doli and fractured her leg. There were also instances of fire breaking out on the sets.
Frustrated, the management went to the village folk to ask why so many accidents were taking place at the studio. They were told a saint buried on the premises was probably not pleased with all the commotion around him. And so, sometime in the 90s, a small shrine was built in honour of Hazrat Janab Ghaib Shah Wali Hyderi Qalandari, an alias that describes his conspicuous absence. The gate of the shrine now remains locked — even though its low boundary wall is easy to leap over — to keep out vagrants.
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