In Person: Basir Mahmood on A Body Bleeds More Than It Contains

Recently exhibited at the ninth edition of Colomboscope, Rhythm Alliances, held from 21–31 January 2026 in Colombo, Basir Mahmood’s multi-channel video installation, A Body Bleeds More Than It Contains (2026), responds to the recent and ongoing demolition of one of Pakistan’s oldest film studios, Bari Studios, a central production site for Lollywood films in Lahore since the early 1950s. Conceived as a one-day procession, the film gathers together actors, technicians, musicians and writers as they confront the closure of the studio. While their livelihoods and everyday lives as cultural workers stand on the threshold of disappearance, giving way to a private housing development project, Mahmood records the gestures, techniques and imaginaries that transform performance into embodied knowledge. He does so with the empathy not of an observer, but of a community member mourning shared fictional and real lives, lived and lost. But the body continues to bleed, endlessly, Mahmood says, so that the film is not only a document of loss but also a remembrance, generative of new forms of creation. In this edited conversation, the filmmaker discusses the meaning of the loss of Bari Studios for its cultural workers; his process of bringing together a community of makers without a site of work; the nature of collective grief; and Lollywood Resource, a platform for long-term engagement with Lahore’s vanishing film industry.

Basir Mahmood (b. 1985, Pakistan) is an artist based between Lahore and Amsterdam, working with video, film and photography. His practice weaves poetic sequences from everyday gestures and social realities, reflecting on identity, distance, memory and power.

(Featured image: Installation view of A Body Bleeds More Than It Contains [2026] by Basir Mahmood at Rhythm Alliances, Colomboscope 2026. Image courtesy of the artist and Colomboscope.)

Recorded on 22 January 2026.

To learn more about previous editions of Colomboscope, read Pamudu Tennekoon’s reflections on Ruwangi Amarasinghe’s fantastical forests and notes on the discussion “Seeding a Grove of South Asian Solidarities” at Colomboscope in 2024 and watch Abilaschan Balamuraley’s conversation with Liz Fernando, Tashyana Handy’s interview with the collective We Are From Here and Annalisa Mansukhani in discussion with Omar Wasim and Thisath Thoradeniya on their work exhibited at Colomboscope in 2022.