FirstPerson: Saba Qamar wants to conquer cinema
“It wasn’t that I didn’t have film offers,” says Saba Qamar when asked why she waited so long to make a debut in films. “In fact, I had many from home and abroad. The lack of ‘quality’ films in Pakistan was one of the reasons why I stayed away. I couldn’t have done the kind of films that were being produced by the Gujjars and doodhwallas as that would have been below my level. I was waiting for a good script and a good director which I finally got in Lahore Se Aagey.”
The actress’ debut film, Lahore Se Aagey (LSA) is a sequel of a Pakistani film (Karachi Se Lahore) and the first film in which both Yasir Hussain and Saba Qamar are playing the lead role.
“People haven’t seen me dance, nor have they seen me in the kind of outfits I’ve worn in this film,” she adds excitedly, “They’re in for a surprise. I’m glad that I got a good director [Wajahat Rauf], good songs [Shiraz Uppal] and a good co-star [Yasir Hussain] — everything that I had hoped to find in my debut flick.”
In her new film, Saba plays a musician and it was a role she had to learn new skills for. “It was Wajahat who taught me how to play a guitar,” she says, “The mannerisms of playing the instrument and how to deliver dialogues for a film which is a different medium altogether from television. We used to discuss everything before the shooting and that’s the reason I never felt like an outsider on the sets and locations. As for the dancing and performing on songs, I enjoyed it all thoroughly!”
The Maat girl who began her career more than a decade ago on television vows to raise the bar, starting with Lahore Se Aagay (LSA) which is releasing later this month
This isn’t the first time Saba has tried working in films, but it will be the first time a film she has worked in will be shown on cinema screens. A few years ago she had appeared in the trailer of Hamza Ali Abbasi’s Kambakht and also in Azeem Sajjad’s 8969. “First things first,” she starts, “I don’t think Hamza is interested in releasing Kambakht anymore as it was shot a long time back and if released, it might look awkward as a lot of things have changed.”
“As for Azeem Sajjad’s project, it was not a film but a tele-film and I was conned into doing it because he was a family friend and claimed that his heroine had disappeared,” she says. A music video from the film was released showing Saba doing an ‘item number’ on a shoddy set with bad choreography. “He [Azeem Sajjad] told me that the song will be shot in a ‘royal’ manner with a huge set, limousines, foreign dancers and what not but when I went on the set, it resembled a second-grade stage,” she continues. “Despite my reservations, I went ahead with the badly-choreographed number which he promised to scrap once the producer had left. It was probably the biggest mistake of my career and the worst experience so far. But what was more hurtful were the statements by both of his wives who blasted me to save their egotistical husband from embarrassment.”