Lok Virsa to screen ‘Out of Africa’ today

‘Mandwa’

Islamabad

Director-Producer: Sidney Pollack

Cast: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford

Music: John Barry

Lok Virsa Film Club ‘Mandwa’ is screening American tragic romance ‘Out of Africa’ today (Saturday) at 5 p.m.

Hollywood, more than any other film making centre, knows how to make a bug-budgeted glamorous and galvanized tragic romance, and that too, in this case, on location.

Budgeted at over $28 million, the film made $130 million at the box office. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford play the leads, directed by Sidney Pollack. ‘Out of Africa’ is based on personal life of Danish writer Isak Dinesen. The film takes us back to 1913, on the eve of First World War.

Independent woman, marriages for money, hunting, safari and disasters play essential roles in this rich dramatic production.

The lead is played by Meryl Streep. She needs a man in her life but she must pay a price for it.  She is rich, independent and wants to live on her own terms. "I don't want to find out one day that I am at the end of someone else's life" she says. She is free-spirited, strong-willed woman on a frontier land. And when men return to womanising, drinking, hunting and being aloof, she forces them out of her life. And when tragedies, there is no end to them. Syphilis, deadly fire, financial chaos, end to coffee plantation in Nairobi, bankruptcy and a plane crash just about changes life of everyone.

‘Out of Africa’ is a visual treat, big, beautiful and imposing. It has been filmed and edited in an old fashioned lyrical and leisurely way where storytelling offers experience of an extraordinary independent woman who is above others.

The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won seven for Best Picture, Director, Art Director, Cinematographer, Adapted Screenplay, Original musical score and Sound. The film runs for 161 minutes.

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