The VICE Guide to Karachi
The VICE Guide to Karachi shows the real and dark side to Pakistan’s biggest city
Canadian-Pakistani journalist Suroosh Alvi, co-founder of the VICE media conglomerate, has made a major breakthrough in journalism, showing the world a never before seen face of Karachi.
http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-karachi-full-length
Suroosh and his crew went directly to the roughest and poorest part of the 18 million people metropolis, hanging out with the local crime boss who provides the slum with water in exchange for public support. Then they went and bought high grade heroin fresh from Afghanistan’s poppy fields for 80 cents a gram and also tagged along on a much publicized police intervention to catch Taliban fighters, which ended up with the arrest an old man sporting a turban and a pistol, in a city where school kids carry AK47s.
The adventure also took them to one of the world’s largest garbage pits where families with children live a borderline feral life scavenging through mountains of thrash for metal to sell. A crooked politician, an assassin for hire and various other scary characters are among the interviewees in this 42-minute long documentary which paints a grim but true picture of the troubles of a behemoth city in the hottest geo-strategic areas on the planet.
A return to the roots of humanist journalism, Here and Now 365 recommends this film to anyone interested in Pakistan, the Middle East or and current affairs. Different than most mainstream news reports and shot in an honest, straightforward manner, it offers viewers a shocking street-level perspective of life in Karachi’s violent neighbourhoods. Not for idealist or hypersensitive types.
Harry Cathead
