Where is Zahir Raihan's 'Let There Be Light'?

Filmmaker Zahir Raihan had announced the film ‘Let There Be Light’ in 1969. While announcing the film from an event at InterContinental hotel in Dhaka he said that the film was his dream project.

In that event the filmmaker had introduced Omar Chishti and Olivia Gomez as the leading actor and actress of the film. But before starting to shoot the film Zahir Raihan dramatically switched his actress. Replacing Olivia he finalised Babita in the film. 

The filmmaker started filming the movie towards August 1970 to highlight the cries of people killed around the world in the name of religion, caste, race and culture. Zahir Raihan himself was the cinematographer of the film.

In the middle of the film’s shooting on 25 March 1971, Pakistani occupying forces carried out genocide on the Bengalis in the name of ‘Operation Searchlight’. Stopping the film, Zahir Raihan left Dhaka in April to take part in the liberation war.

He produced four documentaries on the genocide and the liberation war of 1971. He was also the director of ‘Stop Genocide’ and ‘A State is Born’ of those four.

Zahir Raihan returned to Dhaka after independence. This filmmaker was martyred while going in search of his brother Shahidullah Kaiser at Mirpur. He couldn’t complete filming his dream project ‘Let There Be Light’.

A set had been built for the film on FDC’s floor number 2. There were houses and a church inside. In addition to the floor scenes were also shot on the field inside FDC. However, what percentage of the film had been shot couldn’t be confirmed. All of it was shot inside FDC after all.

Going back in memory Babita told Prothom Alo, “In one of the scenes our house was vandalised and glass shattered in the room. We were running for our lives.”

The film was shot in English. The artistes delivered dialogues in English. But there were no script. Zahir Raihan used to brief artistes on the dialogues and scenes on the spot.

The name of Babita’s character in the film was Eva while Omar Chishti’s character was named Topu. Actor Omar Chishti was not a Bengali. He was born and brought up in Lahore. He used to live in Dhaka because of his father’s job.

Omar Chishti played Babita’s husband in the film. Babita and Omar were in most scenes of the film. Apart from them, many others including Banani Chowdhury, Golam Mustafa and Amjad Hossain acted in the film produced under the banner of Film International. 

In addition to directing the film Zahir Raihan was also involved with the writing of the story and the script. The music was composed by Altaf Mahmud.

There were no traces of the film even after three and a half decades of the independence. The unfinished film was shot on 35 mm and quite a lot of the scenes were yet to be filmed. No dubbing or editing had been done either.

Most of the films and documentaries made by Zahir Raihan including ‘Jibon Theke Newa’ are preserved at the Bangladesh film archive. ‘Let There Be Light’ wasn’t there though.

About three decades ago film officer Fakhrul Alam went on a quest to find the film and found that the footage was lying in the FDC warehouse. Jahangir Hossain was the director of the Film Archive back then and had his office at Shahbagh.

After exchanging letters with FDC, the film archive recovered the footage of the film from the warehouse. And the long lost film generated new hopes. 

Fakhrul Alam told Prothom Alo on Monday that the footage was still in good shape and the film archive planned to convert them into digital format before they were damaged.  After scanning, five and a half hours of footage was found there. Besides ‘OK’ shots there were ‘NG’ shots as well.

The ‘OK’ shots were separated taking help from Abu Musa Debu, the video editor of Zahir Raihan’s documentary, ‘Stop Genocide’. Excluding the ‘NG’ shots the length of ‘Let There Be Light’s playable portion stood at 55 minutes. As the film hadn’t been dubbed, the portion of the film was silent.

Since then the 55-minute recording of the film along with five hours of footage and 35mm footages is preserved at the Film Archive. While, plans had been made a few times to finish filming the incomplete film it wasn’t possible.

Even after one and a half decades of the film being rescued it hasn’t been screened before the audience. The Film Archive took the initiative to screen the film before public for the first time on 12 May 2019. After finalising the date, invitation cards had been printed too.

However that screening was cancelled at the last moment due to objection from Zahir Raihan’s family. So, the audience hasn’t even had the chance to see bits of the film.

On the topic of family’s objection, Zahir Raihan’s wife Suchanda told Prothom Alo on Monday, “The film does not belong to the Film Archive rather it belongs to Zahir Raihan’s heirs. The Film Archive wanted to have a show without taking permission from us. So, I objected.”

In Shuchanda’s words, “We too want the film to come to light. But the filming hasn’t been completed, nor has it been edited or dubbed. They wanted to screen it like a documentary by patching up the rush print. How can they do that? None of us knew about this.”

Film analysts however say that the film of Zahir Raihan’s dream needs to be completed and shown to the audience.

Zahir Raihan didn’t write down the scripts of his films. So, it’s tough to finish the film in his absence.

Quoting Afzal Chowdhury, the cinematographer of many Zahir Raihan film, Khandokar Mahmudul Hasan wrote in his book ‘Muktijuddher Cholochitro’, “Zahir couldn’t complete the film. The planning of the film was inside of his head, nothing used to be written down on paper. So, nobody could finish the film anymore.”

Actress Babita also told Prothom Alo, “The script was inside Zahir Raihan’s head. No one found out how was the ending. Many have tried but it couldn’t be completed.” 

After the footage was recovered, his family planned to finish the film but it could not be done, said Zahir Raihan’s wife Suchanda. She told Prothom Alo that Zahir Raihan did not write any script for the film.

He had started making the film based on an instant idea. It is extremely difficult to finish an unfinished film without a script. Still they kept trying to finish it, but failed.

So the audience will never be able to see the film? In response to such a question, Suchanda said, “The film might be screened if it has been dubbed and edited. But that requires a lot of money. It might be possible if there’s a government initiative.”