The film, “Made In Pakistan,” was screened three times Monday in the Campus Center. After the screenings, producer Ayesha Khan explained that the original intent of the film was to figure out if the Newsweek cover story “Pakistan: World’s Most Dangerous Country” was true or not. She decided to follow four working professionals that lived and worked in the city of Lahore to see just how dangerous their lives were. A few days after they began filming, the president suspended the constitution and set up police rule throughout the country. The movie shows the struggles that these four individuals faced in their personal and work lives.

The movie is shot in an intimate way that really allows the viewer to see the true person that they are following. From what the film demonstrated, there is a definite poverty line that is shown when one of the subjects ventures into an impoverished neighborhood to help boost his political ratings with the locals. There is also “mild” prosperity that the viewer can see when they venture into the city and explore the world of Pakistani fashion and entertainment industries. The thing to take away is that these are people just like us. Even though the media shows the bad side–terrorist training and suicide bombings–the majority of people work regular jobs just like us. They all have their good days and bad days, triumphs and failures, yet the goal that the majority of them want is peace.

Just hours after the movie was screened, Khan gave a lecture about the movie and fielded questions from students, faculty, staff and community members. She touched on her life growing up in Pakistan, with only one channel of state-run television programming from six to 10 at night. She also told the audience how difficult it was to shoot a movie in Pakistan while she was in New York editing her first film, “The Lifting of the Veil.” During one point in the movie her crew was following the lawyer Waleed Khalid; had they been a half an hour earlier they would have been in range of a bomb that went off wounding and killing a total of 60 police officers. She explained how working in an area that was becoming more dangerous by the day almost cost her crew their lives and the project to be terminated.

The final question Khan was asked was, “what advice would she give to students of our generation?” She replied by saying “There is no substitute for hard work.” Even those celebrities that are portrayed as overnight sensations, there are years of hard work that is not shown to the public. She then added that that was not just advice to film students, but rather to all students.