Bollywood takes on Kashmir

Back in the day, the breathtaking valley of Kashmir was Bollywood's backdrop for snowball fights, and the place Shammi Kapoor met pretty women and yelled in delight.

Now, times are more troubled. As Rahul Dholakia's Lamhaa prepares to release, here's a look at films taking on Kashmir and terrorism:

Roja

This Mani Ratnam classic features a couple of newlyweds moving to Kashmir because the husband (Arvind Swamy) is assigned at an army communications post in the state.

Things go badly wrong when he's held hostage by terrorists and his wife, Madhoo, goes on a crusade to save his life.

A breathtaking fable, this Santosh Sivan film about a young boy and his pet donkey uses simple, beautiful allegory to tell a tormented tale.

Set right in the valley, the film looks through the naive eyes of a child to show the rise of terrorism, and its tempting potential to any native youngster.

Ad-man Shoojit Sircar's blue-tinted take on the state features Minissha Lamba as a captivating Kashmiri girl who falls in love with an Army officer, played by Jimmy Shergill.

Her brother, however, happens to be a Jehadi terrorist, and that leads to obvious, severe conflict.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra's visually stunning melodrama pitted Sanjay Dutt's police officer against adopted son and misguided terrorist Hrithik Roshan.

There were a couple of love stories somewhere in there, and much fisticuffs, but the true winners were Binod Pradhan's cinematography and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's music.

Rajkumar Santoshi's National Award winning Pukar starred Anil Kapoor as Major Jaidev Rajvansh, a heroic Army officer disgraced after trumped-up charges of aiding terrorists.

Madhuri Dixit is the woman betraying him, while Santosh Sivan makes sure Kashmir looks mindblowing.

A highly jingoistic view of the 1999 Kargil conflict, this JP Dutta multistarrer was better known for its cast -- Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan, Suniel Shetty, Saif Ali Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Sanjay Kapoor, Nagarjuna, Akshaye Khanna, Ashutosh Rana, Manoj Bajpai, Raveena Tandon, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor -- than for the film itself.

Anu Malik's soundtrack was a definite highlight, though.

Kunal Kohli's smash hit was one of the silliest recent Kashmir movies, featuring Aamir Khan as a Kashmiri terrorist who misleads romantic blind girl Kajol into love to trick his way into a high security position.

The film got sillier and sillier, but Jatin-Lalit's music worked well.

Guddu Dhano's uber-commercial film starred Sunny Deol as a morally upright youth who falls in love with a pretty terrorist, played by Tabu.

The film is ridiculous, savaged by critics and a commercial flop, but a Sunny paaji perspective on the state is a pretty unique thing.

Shivajee Chandrabhushan's black and white drama is a visually stunning film, featuring Danny Dengzongpa, Raj Zutshi and Aamir Bashir.

The lead, however, is young Gauri in the role of the creative Lasya. Grounded and earthy, this take on Kashmir is definitely worth a watch.

Piyush Jha's 2009 drama cast young actor Parzan Dastur in the lead as the eponymous Sikandar, a schoolboy and wannabe footballer who gets gradually attracted to the charisma offered by terrorism.

Undone by bad acting and a poor script, the film nevertheless showed thematic potential.