Pollywood a window into seedy, risky side of Pakistani cinema

A projectionist lies asleep in the sweltering Pakistan heat, his face covered by a cloth. A colleague rewinds a reel manually while on screen, through the hashish smoke, a woman bounces on a bed singing "hello, hello, hello" into a mobile phone.

Her would-be lover, who is old, apparently drunk and in another room, sings "hello, hello, hello" back to her while splashing his head and shoulders with aftershave. Then the two of them, both fully clothed, sing it again.

Welcome to the strangely innocent yet seedy world of Pashto cinema, or Pollywood, which once made its home in Pakistan's wild frontier town of Peshawar, but is now confined to a handful of cinemas that have not been attacked by Islamists.

The Taliban banned cinema and music during their five-year rule in neighbouring Afghanistan, deeming them un-Islamic, and insisted that women wear all-enveloping burqas.

The Pakistani Taliban are just as strict, and in Pashto cinema, where there is no sex or even kissing and only a bit of midriff on show, all their rules are broken. Several cinemas have been attacked, three of them either bombed or burned to the ground. Bombs have also gone off outside the venues.

But even some of those who hate the Taliban are scornful, and the industry has been fading over the decades as India's higher-quality Bollywood movies flourish.