Nanak Naam Jahaz Hai
The film that revived Punjabi cinema in India, a family drama of faith starring Prithviraj Kapoor.
After Partition the Punjabi film industry, which had been centred in Lahore, almost disappeared in India. Nanak Naam Jahaz Hai, made in 1969 in the 500th year of Guru Nanak's birth, told of a family broken and healed by faith. Audiences came in coaches from the villages; some took off their shoes before entering the cinema.
Its success, and its national award, started a new wave of Punjabi films in India.
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 Lahore theatre company founded under military rule, whose play Bulha brought Bulleh Shah to the stage.
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.