First published in 1997 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of Pakistan, the book features a review of films before Partition, plots of great cinema classics, trivia, and cinema lore. It contains anecdotes and reminiscences about the people who shaped the entertainment industry, as well as interviews with directors and producers. But alongside the trivia is a clever synthesis juxtaposing the artistic development of the cinematic world with the overall social development in the country. It shows how the narrow self-interest of the ruling clique clashed with the creative potential of the artistic world, stifling originality and all but destroying the film industry. The narrative is punctuated with over a hundred photographs and contains an index of all the films made to date.

In this second edition of Mushtaq Gazdar’s seminal work, I. A. Rehman, Haris Gazdar, and Aisha Gazdar provide an overview of the two decades since, marking seventy years of the country’s film industry. The filmography has also been updated to include the last two decades.