The Rafi Peer Theatre’s 10-day world performing arts festival, 2004, is being held at the Alhamra Cultural Complex from Nov 27.

As many as 600 artistes of over 33 countries, including India, will perform in various disciplines of performing arts like dance, theatre, music and puppetry.

Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi will inaugurate the festival. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will attend its premier show on Nov 26, a day ahead of its formal launch.

Rafi Peer Theatre directors Faizan Peerzada and Usman Peerzada told newsmen here at the Lahore Press Club on Friday that it was one of the biggest festivals in South Asia.

Pakistan’s Sabiha Sumar won the top prize at Switzerland’s principal film festival(6-16 August) with her story of a woman whose son becomes an extremist.

The jury awarded the Golden Leopard to “Khamosh Pani” (”Silent Waters”), about the relationship between a widow and her son as the young man veers into religious extremism after in 1979. The film also won the festival’s Ecumenical Prize.

Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan performed in Geneva and in the “Pakistan House”, the residence of the Ambassador of Pakistan Bern, Switzerland.

This is the third consecutive year that the Swiss Pakistan Society has invited Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan to Switzerland for concert tours. On 5 April 2004 the Ambassador of Pakistan, H.E. Mrs Fauzia Abbas, and the Swiss Pakistan Society hosted a concert at the Ambassador’s residence. It was a selected audience of Ambassadors of the friendly nations to Pakistan and high ranking officials of the Swiss government. Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan captured the audience with a classical Tarana followed by Thumri, Sufi Kafi and Ghazals. He concluded the concert with a powerful Dhamal. Many guests were appeared to be taken by it and some admitted that the music has gone through them and deeply touched them.

The open spaces in the Pakistani villages were packed. People were sitting in trees and on rooftops. In a nation that barely has a film industry, director Sabiha Sumar’s travelling cinema was both a novelty and a flashpoint.

What Sumar showed in 41 villages throughout Pakistan earlier this year was her new feature film Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters), which depicts how religious fundamentalism — in this case, both Muslim and Sikh — can destroy families.