Ajoka Theatre
The Lahore theatre company founded under military rule, whose play Bulha brought Bulleh Shah to the stage.
Madeeha Gauhar and Shahid Nadeem founded Ajoka in Lahore in 1984, under General Zia, performing in homes and gardens when halls were closed to them. Its plays, in Punjabi and Urdu, took on religious intolerance, the treatment of women, and the wounds of Partition.
Bulha, about the life of Bulleh Shah, has been performed in both Punjabs and abroad, and Ajoka has often toured in India, one of the few cultural bridges that kept working across the border.
More cinema and theatre
Lahore made films before Bombay was the capital of Indian cinema, and after 1947 became the heart of Pakistani and Punjabi film.
The Punjabi action film that made Sultan Rahi a legend, and whose 2022 remake became the highest-grossing Pakistani film ever.
From Prithviraj Kapoor to Yash Chopra, many of the founders of Hindi cinema came from the Punjab and the frontier.
Travelling comedians and mimics who played at weddings, fairs and courts, mocking landlords, priests and officials.
The dramatist who took political plays to the villages of Indian Punjab, known to millions as Bhai Manna Singh.
The film that revived Punjabi cinema in India, a family drama of faith starring Prithviraj Kapoor.
Lahore's great film of Waris Shah's Heer, with Firdous and Ijaz and songs by Noor Jehan.
A serious Punjabi film about a landlord, his tenant and the wrong done to a woman, made by a team of art-cinema talents.
The boom of the 2010s, when Punjabi films from Mohali and Lahore filled cinemas from Ludhiana to Brampton.