Khirki screening of Sergei Eisenstein's "Strike" (1925) at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 5:00 pm

From: Mohsin <mhsnmudassar@gmail.com>

Subject: Khirki Screening 29-08-2026

Date: 25 August 2026 at 5:33:32 PM GMT+5

To: rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

Join us for a screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike (1925). The movie is a landmark of Soviet cinema and one of the most influential films in the history of political filmmaking.

Set against the backdrop of a workers’ strike, Eisenstein’s first feature film pioneers soviet cinema and lays the foundation of a new kind of filmmaking.

Join us for an evening of cinema, history and discussion at the Research & Publication Centre.

📍Research & Publication Centre, 65 Main Boulevard, Gulberg, Lahore

🗓️ Saturday, 29 August

🕓 5pm

Business Recorder Column August 25, 2026

Mountains and molehills

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The brouhaha over incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan’s medical check up and treatment in a private hospital (Shifa Hospital), as ordered by the Supreme Court on August 18, 2026, seems an unnecessary going a mile too far by what appears to be an insecure ‘hybrid’ (i.e. establishment dominated) government. Even if one concedes some weight to the government’s argument that the Supreme Court order may open the floodgates to requests for similar treatment by all other prisoners needing medical attention, it could have been handled better without going against the Supreme Court’s order in letter and spirit. If the government’s choice of sending Imran Khan to a government hospital (PIMS) yielded the result that it did, i.e. he was in good health and therefore returned to jail (notwithstanding the error of not conducting a recommended {on August 1} computed tomography angiography {CTA}), it would not be too farfetched to conclude that the private hospital check up in Shifa Hospital may well have yielded the same result, without leaving the government to face a possible contempt of court violation.

As things stand now, and taking Imran Khan’s sister Uzma Khan’s post-examination remark that her brother was fine, the government can be considered to have unnecessarily embarrassed no one but itself. Such self-inflicted, unnecessary wounds do the government’s case no good.

With due respect, the Supreme Court’s order of August 18 too presented a sense of urgency that the subsequent check up nullified. Admitted, the months long solitary confinement of Imran Khan must have taken a toll in terms of high blood pressure, mental anguish exacerbated by the problem in his right eye, etc., but the court seemed anxious to reverse its previous slowness in taking up the repeated petitions by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) to have Imran Khan’s medical condition checked and his isolation broken by family visits and phone calls with his sons. The instruction to shift Imran Khan to Shifa Hospital, as the PTI’s repeated petitions wanted, too seemed not to have taken into account the implications regarding other prisoners, who could claim similar concessions. At the time of writing, reports speak of three prisoners having forwarded petitions to the court on these lines. They may not be the last ones.

Pakistan has a poor record of treatment of high profile prisoners of political standing. One only has to recall Nawaz Sharif’s treatment by (ironically) Imran Khan’s government to clinch the argument. He was not allowed to visit his ailing wife, who passed away unseen by him. It was only when medical check ups revealed serious complications with his blood platelets count that the powers-that-be relented and allowed him to leave for London and treatment. One would have expected the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to have shown far more sensitivity on the issue of the health problems of incarcerated leaders after undergoing that experience. There is also some seeming confusion within the government’s ranks regarding the whole issue, to the extent that now Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has ordered an inquiry into the whole affair.

What the government succeeded in doing through its ham-handed dealing with the issue of Imran Khan’s medical check up and breaking of his isolation was to turn a molehill into a mountain of bad air and negative vibes. It would have been far netter for the incumbents to have obeyed the Supreme Court’s injunction while filing its review petition to prevent an avalanche of similar requests from thousands of prisoners claiming equal treatment. At least then it would not have come out looking ‘cruel’, ‘uncaring’ and, pardon the slip, ‘stupid’.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Filmbàr screening of Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000) at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Friday, August 28, 2026, at 5pm

Filmbàr screening of Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000) at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Friday, August 28, 2026, at 5pm.

Czechoslovakian immigrant Selma lives in a small American town with her young son Gene. She works in a local factory and enjoys musicals, watching them and acting in them. However, due to an hereditary condition, she is going blind and her main aim is to save enough money to make sure her son's eyesight is saved.

The screening will be followed by a discussion over tea. Lift is operational.

Address: Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd Floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom).

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)

Filmbàr screening of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Friday, August 21, 2026, at 5pm

Filmbàr screening of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Friday, August 21, 2026, at 5pm.

In the 1960s in London, Thomas, a successful, dedicated and arrogant photographer, has just left a homeless shelter since he is preparing photos about violence. He drives his Rolls-Royce to his studio, where he is taking pictures of top-models. He goes to a park and starts randomly shooting pictures. He takes some pictures of a young woman and an old man together, and the woman tries to retrieve the negative. The woman follows him to his studio, trying to get the negative and offering even sex with him for the negative, but he gives another one to her. He becomes obsessed, trying to understand the interest of the woman in the pictures. Then he reveals the negative and blows-up some details, discovering what might be a dead body in the park.

The screening will be followed by a discussion over tea. Lift is operational.

Address: Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd Floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom).

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)  

Filmbàr screening of Andrzej Żuławski's On the Silver Globe (1989) at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Friday, August 07, 2026, at 5pm.

Filmbàr screening of Andrzej Żuławski's On the Silver Globe (1989) at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Friday, August 07, 2026, at 5pm.

A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to find freedom and start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They eventually die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god. Some time later, a space bureaucrat, running from a broken heart, arrives and finds the colonizer's descendants enslaved by bird-monsters called Cherns. Society is divided into numerous classes, and everyone is waiting for the arrival of a messiah. The newcomer is considered a suitable candidate, and for some time he lives as a god.

The screening will be followed by a discussion over tea. Lift is operational.

Address: Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd Floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom)

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)

The August 2026 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out

The August 2026 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com

Contents:

1. Rashed Rahman: The Industrial Revolution – I.

2. Chris Gilbert: Global South Struggles for Socialism and the Workers' Side of Marxism.

3. Aasim Sajjad Akhtar: Pakistan's heyday as US-Iran mediator is a thin veil over its domestic crises.

4. Notes from the Editors (of Monthly Review).

5. Vijay Prashad: Socialism is slow to mature.

6. Sara Kazmi: The Marxist Punjabi Movement: Language and Literary Radicalism in Pakistan – III: Language and Literature in the Punjabi Movement: "Lok boli, lok vehaar": the people's language, the people's world.

7. Dr Saulat Nagi: Why Imperialism Fears Iran: Insights from Samir Amin.

8. Imran Bajwa: Two Trillion Dollars War.

9. From the Archives: PMR January 2019: Rashed Rahman: Inquilabi Tabdeeli ki Muasar Jadd-o-Jehad (The contemporary struggle for revolutionary change) (Urdu).

10. Daud Zafar Nadeem: Mahrang Baloch aur Punjab (Urdu).

11. Letter to the Editor: Daud Zafar Nadeem: Mao Spectre (Urdu).

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)

Khirki screening of "Judas and the Black Messiah" at Research and Publication Centre (RPC) on Saturday, August 1, 2026 at 5:00 pm

This Saturday, join us at the Research and Publication Centre for a screening of Judas and the Black Messiah—an Academy Award-winning film that tells the remarkable story of Fred Hampton, the charismatic young chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, and William O'Neal, the FBI informant tasked with infiltrating the movement.

The film explores questions of state power, surveillance, political organizing, race, solidarity, and the price of resistance. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in the United States, it offers lasting lessons about how movements for justice are built, challenged, and remembered.

Following the screening, we'll have an open discussion reflecting on the film's themes and their relevance to contemporary struggles around the world.

🗓️ August 1st, Saturday

📍 Research and Publication Centre

🕓 5pm

Everyone is welcome.