Karachi never stops. Its streets stay crowded and its bazaars stay loud, but inside the same city its old public libraries are slowly fading into silence. Khaak Zada Safay (Dust-Covered Pages) asks whether they can be revived in a digital age.
Libraries once shaped the thinking of whole generations in Karachi. Students studied for hours between the shelves, researchers dug through archives, and people gathered around knowledge. Today many of those buildings stand isolated and neglected, and most visitors come only to prepare for exams.
The film visits the Hasrat Mohani Memorial Library, built in memory of the poet, journalist and Pakistan Movement leader Maulana Hasrat Mohani, who copied rare books by hand when he could not buy them. It hears from Syed Muhammad Asghar Kazmi of the library, Syed Waseem Abbas, who has covered education for Dawn News for years, and Shahid Ali Khan, the librarian of a departmental library holding nearly 8,000 books.
Their answers point the same way: the decline starts at home, with children handed phones to keep them quiet, and continues in a culture where a book has become a PDF and reading has become a search query.
“The question is just this: books are still waiting. But are we still capable of reading them?”
Anika Zehra directed the documentary. Cinegma Films took it through post: shaping the interviews into a story in the edit, grading the footage into one consistent look, and cleaning and mixing the interview sound.
Khaak Zada Safay is a short Urdu documentary by Anika Zehra about Karachi's old public libraries. Through librarians, a Dawn News education reporter and the people who keep places like the Hasrat Mohani Memorial Library open, it asks whether reading culture can be revived in a city where most people now read on screens.
Cinegma Films handled post-production: Syed Asad Raza Abidi edited the documentary, colour graded it in DaVinci Resolve and mixed the sound.
Yes. We take on standalone documentary editing, colour grading and sound mixing for footage shot by other teams, in Karachi or remotely. Send your brief on WhatsApp at +92 339 0344180 or email info@cinegmafilms.com for a quote.