Bhands and naqqals: folk theatre
Travelling comedians and mimics who played at weddings, fairs and courts, mocking landlords, priests and officials.
The naqqals, mimics, performed short comic plays with music at weddings and fairs, and the bhands improvised jokes and impressions, often turning them on the powerful people in the audience. Many were Mirasis by birth, and the best were famous across the Punjab.
Their sharp, crude humour shaped Punjabi comedy, from radio and stage to the comic actors of Punjabi film on both sides of 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.
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.
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.