ike going to the theatre, being at a cinema has not been as popular recently as it was before the invention and proliferation of video cassettes, DVD players, home projectors, YouTube and Netflix. Both the stage and cinema halls provided an occasion to meet, comment and exchange ideas about what was witnessed by a large audience simultaneously. It was fun – a ritual, a passion.

Susan Sontag recounts the effect of cinema: “…it was from a weekly visit to the cinema that you learned (or tried to learn) how to strut, to smoke, to kiss, to fight, to grieve. Movies gave you tips about how to be attractive, such as… it looks good to wear a raincoat even when it is not raining. But whatever you took home from the movies was only a part of the larger experience of losing yourself in faces, in lives that were not yours.”

Cinema is a unique art form because, before the first movie (The Great Train Robbery, 1903), all artistic creations were either still or manually moved. In a sense, film encompassed prevalent art forms such as photography, painting, sculpture, drawing, fiction, poetry, music, singing, dance and costume design. In addition, it had an unparalleled impact on certain pictorial practices, including visual art, poster design and calligraphy.

It also played an important role in shaping the art of Pakistan. One of the masters from the earlier generation, Ustad Allah Bux, began his career by painting stage backdrops in Bombay for theatre, which eventually evolved into film. This past can be traced in the aesthetics of Bux, as the settings of his pastoral scenes, the rendering of folk characters and the depiction of rural landscapes are closely linked to a theatrical (cinematic) sensibility. His realistic, narration-oriented approach and the relationship between individuals and their backgrounds reflect an early exposure to a world of illusion – presented and projected as if real.

The story of this initial encounter is long and significant in the lives of several artists in the Islamic Republic. In a country with only a few art schools; a limited number of art galleries and museums; almost non-existent media coverage on art; and inaccessible write-ups on exhibitions and artists, one readily available source of inspiration and information for young and aspiring artists was cinema billboard painting.

Several prominent figures in today’s art world and academia began their artistic journeys either by observing painters at work in their shops or by joining them as apprentices. RM Naeem, Abdul Jabbar Gul, Muhammad Zeeshan, Waseem Ahmed, Aqeel Solangi, Ahmed Ali Manganhar and Hamid Ali Hanabi from Sindh, as well as Sajjad Nawaz and Javaid Mughal from the Punjab, received their first training in art under the skilled hands of film hoarding painters.

A defining feature of this distinctive past is the presence and dominance of realism in some artists’ imagery. Whether a painter, miniature artist or sculptor, their emphasis on the human form within a naturalistic framework is immediately evident. In some cases, figures are rendered with mechanical precision yet imbued with imaginative hues or placed against fictional, surrealist backdrops. While artistic concepts may vary, the depiction of human figures, objects and vegetation often aligns with a photographic sensibility – reaffirming that movies, regardless of their era, subject, script, resources, or budget, are fundamentally products of the camera.

A number of these artists still acknowledge their early introduction to cinema painting by incorporating its references on a deeper level. Ahmed Ali Manganhar has repeatedly recreated the poetics of our desires—manifested first on the silver screen and later in our dreams, fascinations and fantasies. His appropriation of film vocabulary to reflect personal, cultural and historical crevices can be compared to MF Husain’s, who, after his years as a movie billboard painter, continued to evoke the scale, fluidity and speed of a cinema hoarding image maker.

Alongside these artists, another group has approached cinema imagery from a different perspective – using it as a form of social critique; an archive of an era; a symbol of the collective psyche; a mode of cultural exchange; and a record of political shifts. David Alesworth and Durriya Kazi, in their collaborative work with billboard painters, created installations and mixed media pieces, including Very Very Sweet Medina (1999). This installation serves as a repository of society’s attitudes towards love, relationships, sex, violence and commodification. Similarly, Iftikhar Dadi has produced photography-based work, such as Shabnam, that explores how cinema is deeply embedded in people’s lives, minds and behaviours, shaping both domestic aesthetics and the visual culture of the marketplace.

Long before these contemporary artists, Ijaz-ul Hassan incorporated imagery from popular cinema in his multifaceted paintings to critique the use of media, the manipulation of the masses by market forces and resistance against imperialism. In his iconic canvas Tha (1974), housed in the Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan, Hassan juxtaposes a Punjabi film actress dancing alongside a Vietcong mother holding her child in one arm and a rifle in the other. This striking composition contrasts the perception of women as objects of pleasure and entertainment in a consumerist society with their role as freedom fighters in politically conscious communities.

Hassan revisited cinematic language in his 1997 mural Imaging, created for NAFDAC cinema hall in Islamabad (now displayed at the National Art Gallery, Islamabad). Spanning six panels measuring 96” × 288” in oil on canvas, the artwork features strips of film sequences and torn political posters as a backdrop to everyday figures – a man carrying his son on a bicycle; a couple with their child perched on the husband’s shoulders; and two malnourished children on the roadside. The work not only immerses the viewer in the scene but also highlights the stark contrast between daily life and the world of cinema – a space where audiences escape into an idealised, unattainable reality for a few fleeting hours.

The inseparable bond between spectators and actors is highlighted in Rashid Rana’s three pieces titled Ommatidia I, II, & III (2004, C-print + DIASEC). Each features the image of a Bollywood star composed of pixels made up of Pakistani men watching movie screens. The structure of the work suggests how a cinema-goer, while watching a film, sees himself projected into the persona, role and status of Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Hrithik Roshan. By replacing these mega-idols with himself, he imagines transforming his own meagre existence, difficult circumstances and problematic environment into a beautified, glorious and glamorous world.

In an earlier work, Face to Face (2000), Rana had juxtaposed a large painted image of Sultan Rahi – the celebrated hero of Punjabi cinema, brandishing a gun – next to a tiny childhood photograph of himself dressed in an army outfit. The piece alludes to the fascination with violence that leads a society to idolise military careers and connect with the blood-shedding villains of popular cinema.

This momentary transportation to another world, made possible through cinema, is the key to its enduring allure and widespread appeal – something no other art form can replicate in quite the same way. While literature and visual arts allow one to travel to different realms, cinema offers the ultimate transmigration. Unlike a work of visual art or a piece of literature, it can be accessed without the ability to read or the privilege of wealth. Someone who has never attended school can enjoy a movie just as much as the business tycoon sitting next to them in the cinema hall.

Perhaps this is why visual artists continue to return to cinema as a subject – to explore a language that is democratic, universally recognisable and one that enters our consciousness deeply, lingering long after the screen fades to black.

The writer is an art critic, a curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.