Actress Aamina Sheikh speaks to Divya Kaushik about the revolution in content that private producers brought about in the Pakistani TV industry
Her peers and family thought she has gone nuts when she decided to return to Pakistan after completing film video production course from Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts. She was a part of theatre circle there and was getting good offers. But Aamina Sheikh chose challenge over convenience.
She took note of the revolution that the Pakistani TV industry was going through five years ago and returned to be a part of it. The actress informs, “I left Pakistan for higher studies in 1999, but when I returned in over five years time I realised that Pakistani media underwent a huge change. When I left there were only two channels but when more private producers had set foot in the industry, there were so many new channels that generated more employment for the actors and producers in the industry. The content of the shows was undergoing a huge change to reflect on the changing social scenario in the country. The stories were contemporary yet deep-rooted in our tradition. The advent of technology only did wonders to the quality and the way the serials were being shot. It is because of the way our shows are shot they look more like cinema than TV shows. All these changes changed my perception and I decided to take on acting. But before venturing into TV serials I did many telefilms and did a lot of theatre work. That helped me to play a range of characters and proved to others in the industry that I can play diverse roles. After watching my work in telefilms, producers started offering me TV serial work and since then there has been no looking back,” shares Aamina Sheikh, who is seen playing the role of Aiman in the show Maat on Zindagi channel.
The show was launched in Pakistan in the year 2012 and was popular because of its portrayal of two extreme characters, who are shown as sisters in the show.
The two sisters are as different as chalk and cheese and their contrasting personalities and difference in viewpoints later results in a conflict-like situation. Aamina says, “The show is also about karma and what goes around comes around. The show got popular in no time in our country because of very real situation it portrayed. What is depicted in the show can be a situation of any middle-class household in South East Asia. In fact, the show received a very good feedback from the online media. Thanks to digital platforms, today it is so easy to share creative content with rest of the world.”
Aamina made her debut in films with Seedling, which was written by an Australian and was a Pakistani production. The film which was based on reincarnation made rounds in many festivals and won two international awards in New York Film Festival and SAARC Film festival. Her second film was Josh, a commercial drama. The actress says that the film industry in Pakistan is still at its nascent stages and it is difficult to find range of subjects. But the change has started to happen.
She says, “While we always had a well-established TV industry, our film industry is still looking forward to set a footing in the global film market. But there are films being made on interesting subjects and gradually I want to be doing more films, but TV shows will always be of great interest to me. My next film will be Operation 021.” So far, the actress has not got lucky like many of her industry counterparts who are finding takers in Bollywood but she is awaiting a good script to make her foray in our film industry.