Pakistani filmmaker's 'leap of faith' in UAE

Dubai - Theatre is her new love, but her passion for Urdu, a potent part of her DNA

Rarely people are able to follow their hearts and enjoy the contentment too. Amna Khaishgi is one such person who has always told stories from her heart and earned kudos among the Pakistani community and world for this.
The UAE has always been home to many Pakistanis, many of whom have left an indelible mark on those around them, Amna being one among the many.
She has found the most satisfaction in telling stories even though her first love has always been journalism.
Amna is also a filmmaker and broadcaster and who has made several critically acclaimed documentaries that have been screened at prestigious festivals including the Cannes Film Festival.
A journalist and a story-teller, Amna is defiant in her stance, she believes in leading her life fearlessly. Only recently she became part of theatre. She played the part of 'biwi' (wife) in the first-ever original Urdu play in the UAE Miyan, Biwi and Wagah that was staged at the Junction this weekend to meet a resounding success.
Born and brought up in Karachi, Amna moved to the UAE in 2003 after her marriage and took up freelancing writing jobs before joining ARY and GEO TV as their Dubai-based correspondent.
"I have been discovering the world in the company of my Indian-journalist husband," she told Khaleej Times, a true reflection of the unity of the nations that are celebrating their independence days on August 14 and 15.
As a reporter, she writes about migrant populations, especially workers and South Asian expatriate communities, something that she captured in her documentary 'Touchwood' that followed the life of a carpenter in the UAE.
"Journalism is my first love even though the growth has been organic and progressed from journalism to filmmaking to theatre," she says.
Theatre is her new love, but her passion for Urdu, a potent part of her DNA. Amna's love for the written word also carries the notoriety of her grandfather, an acclaimed Urdu and Persian scholar, who not only produced literary works in both the languages, but also painstakingly compiled an Urdu-Persian (lughat) Thesaurus. Currently. she is the correspondent of Arab News in UAE after having completed a three year stint at The National.
Her documentary Leap of Faith was funded by the Abu Dhabi Film Commission and taken by the Abu Dhabi government to Cannes.  She later also did a documentary on Meena Bazar, a bazaar run by women only in Karachi.
"I have done al my work on the spur of the moment. It's the voice of the heart," she says.
Amna says, "When you are a journalist, you are a story teller who observes real stories and wants to write many events that you cannot in reports, so there is a kind of creativity that stays within you."
She says film-making is expensive and in the process, you smooth over all the imperfections of life. "Films are so perfect and artificial while theatre isn't," says Amna explaining her progression to theatre. "Theatre is magic.it is real."
In December 2016, Amna and a close group of 12 friends became part of Qissa Go (Story Telling) which was the brain child of UAE-based Tanya Daud. The group put out a private production n December last year that was liked by many which piqued Amna's interest in theatre.
Goonj, which is a separate entity and not related to Qissa Go, is the first Urdu theatre in UAE that produced Miyan, Biwi and Wagah, the story of an Indian husband and Pakistani wife who tell their story through the lost art of letter writing.
"The play was meant to have humour, and intensity and we started off with writing letters to each other which we reenacted," she says.
The two-day show was a big hit and already offers to perform it in other countries, she adds.
asmaalizain@khaleejtimes.com
 

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