 Aga Khan University (AKU) is pleased to invite you at a Special Lecture on ‘Cultural Sensibilities in Contemporary Societies' by Aslam Azhar, Former Chairman, Pakistan Television Corporation.
Date, Time and Venue
Thursday, November 1, 2007
4:00 PM at Aga Khan University Auditorium
Programme
4:00 - 4:05 PM |
Welcome address and introduction of the speaker by AKU President |
4:05 - 5:00 PM |
Lecture by Aslam Azhar |
5:00 - 5:25 PM |
Question and answer session |
5:25 - 5:30 PM |
Vote of thanks |
5:30 - 6:00 PM |
Refreshments |
Admission is free – No seat reservation
About Aslam Azhar
Aslam Azhar is known in Pakistan as the Baba (Father) of television, although, as he puts it, he might now more appropriately be relegated to the status of Dada-i-TV (Grandfather)!
He was born in Lahore in 1932, and was in the last school class to matriculate in April 1947 before Independence . He graduated from Government College , Lahore in Physics and Mathematics in 1951, and then from Cambridge University , in the UK , in Law in 1954.
He spent the next six years serving multinational companies, first electrical and then oil. In 1961 he became restless. Parhhein Farsi aur beichein teil , he says (they read Farsi and then they go on to sell oil) — and of course he was doing quite literally that! So he quit.
The next four years were freelance: radio broadcasting, documentary films, a weekly column in a newspaper (which he titled WHENCE AND WITHER, for the Morning News ), and for his own satisfaction, directing and acting in the theatre. These were all loves from his adolescence years.
In 1964, a Japanese company was given the contract to set up a ‘Pilot' TV station in Lahore , and another in Dhaka , to determine whether, in the then discouraging climate of the film industry, TV would at all ‘work'.
Aslam Azhar was interviewed and given the assignment of Head of Programmes at Lahore . He recruited a small team of producers, cameramen, designers and the rest, trained them, and put together a team of creative writers. Three months after inauguration in September 1964, they proved that, in Pakistan , TV did work, and professional television was born.
Aslam Azhar became the Managing Director of the PTV Corporation in 1972, and then, after a hiatus, became Chairman in 1989 — from which job he presently resigned.
In these last 15 years, he has been reading much and writing a little, and mostly contemplating the issues of life in human society down the ages. He likes to quote his father, who liked quoting the poet, Robert Browning:
Grow old along with me
The best is yet to be
The last of life
For which the first was made
For more information, please contact:
Conference Secretariat
Tel: 92 21 486 4584
Email: conf.sect@aku.edu
|
