Even if Shah Rukh Khan had come by, the enthusiasts would have seen him for a minute before running back to their kites, writer-filmmaker Hardik Mehta tells  Anand Holla after landing the Al Jazeera Jury Award for Best Short Documentary

During the festival of Uttarayan, the day when winter begins to melt into summer, thousands of kites dot the skies of the Gujarat state in Western India, like some hyperactive, multi-coloured earthly constellation. The kite capital though is the city of Ahmedabad, which hosts the massive International Kite Festival that draws people from all over the world during Uttarayan.
Spellbound by the spectacle and the frenzy, writer-filmmaker Hardik Mehta decided to make a documentary that captures the celebrations of a city high on kites through the charming story of the 11-year-old Zaid, a passionate kite-flying, kite-fighting, kite-running boy who must somehow find a way to get to the terrace of a building on the big day.
At the recent Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival in Doha, Mehta’s film Amdavad Ma Famous won the Jury Award for Best Short Documentary, which comes on the back of another best short documentary film award that it claimed at the Budapest International Documentary Film Festival.
With the Uttarayan Kite Festival all set to conquer the skies in three weeks from now, Community chatted up with Mehta about what went into making this charming ode to boyhood and the simple pleasure of kite-flying:
 
How and when did this idea first strike you?
Sometime in December 2013, I was writing a screenplay of a feature film. Generally, writing demands a lot of time and effort while the writer remains mostly physically inactive. So while writing, I realised I have not been making anything; like words and thoughts might be getting captured on paper but I am generating no visual. And what good a filmmaker am I if I don’t have a film to show? The Uttarayan Kite Festival in January was fast approaching and I really had nothing great to do. So with my still camera in hand, I crashed at my sister’s place in Ahmedabad. There, every morning, I would go to old Ahmedabad and shoot some stills of the city gearing up for the Kite Festival.
 
Why did you find this subject of kite-flying and the Kite Festival interesting?
I belong to Vadodara in Gujarat. I have grown up seeing friends and people go crazy during this festival. But I have never found kite-flying interesting. In fact, I have always hated it because I couldn’t learn how to fly a kite and the abrasive kite thread, called maanja, often cut my fingers. So I have never had any fascination for it.
But when I was in Ahmedabad taking photographs, I saw the whole city gripped by the phenomenon of kites. Literally, everybody on the road would look up at the sky while walking and that would make me laugh. I couldn’t believe that this festival could get a 60-year-old and a six-year-old to fight on the streets for a kite. Isn’t that amazing? During those days, people in Ahmedabad go absolutely crazy for kites and to celebrate the festival.
 
What sort of narrative elements made you choose to focus on Zaid’s story?
Zaid Khedawala, who was then nine years old, instantly caught my attention. He belongs to the Dhal Ni Pol – Astodia area of Old Ahmedabad. The passion that flashes in his eyes for kites is something words can’t describe. He would jump across terraces, maneuver through thick traffic, run across roads, beat everyone to the chase and grab the kite. When I asked him whether it would be okay if I filmed him, he said, ‘Just don’t stop me from chasing and running for kites. Otherwise, you can film me’. He comes from a lower income household — his father is a mechanic. His quest, therefore, was to find the best located terrace for him to fly his kites. This, then, became my major narrative element for the film and that’s how Amdavad Ma Famous shaped up.
 
Tell us a bit about the filming process. Was a lot of it shot impromptu? How many days did the filming take? How complex was it to edit it?
Since the festival happens for only two to three days, on January 14 and 15, there was no way we could make a film by shooting only for two days. So we shot first in January 2014. Here, I would like to mention the major role my cinematographer Piyush Puty has played in this film. Once I had found Zaid and his friends, I called Piyush. Armed with his full camera gear, he came rushing from Mumbai. Piyush belongs to Orissa. He has never seen a festival as big on scale and as colourful, which helped us so much more as he captured the festival with his fresh eyes and perspective.
As far as I was concerned, I had already given up on the festival as I never liked it. My focus was only Zaid. So we filmed in January 2014. And then in January 2015, we went there again but now with two more cameras and another talented cinematographer Harshbir Singh in tow. In total, we shot for six days, spread over two years. Editing is where the film found shape and that took us nearly a good three months! Yes, even to make a 30-minute narrative documentary, it took us three months to edit and give the film a shape. 
 
What was the most challenging part about making this film?
Editing. We had shot so much footage of the festival, of Zaid, his family, friends, his neighbourhood, his vicinity, you name it. We interviewed so many people, and so many entertaining people at that. What to keep and what not to, therefore, became a huge challenge. Plus understanding what is relevant to the story and what isn’t, consumed most of our time. During this process, I realised that editing is exactly like writing a script. Since this was a documentary about a boy, there was no script to it. Thus, editing became a very strong narrative tool for storytelling.
 
Was it easy to get the children to behave in their usual way, without letting them get conscious of the camera?
For the first couple of days, they were conscious of the camera following them. We then opted to shoot with telephoto lenses so as to shoot them from afar and let them be in their element. We were always positioned on the opposite side of the road when we would see them chasing. Eventually, they were so engrossed in the festival that they didn’t pay us much attention and that’s when we chose to go close to them. It was the last day of the festival in 2014. For them, even if Shah Rukh Khan had come by, they would have seen him for a minute before running back to their kites.
 
The film is wonderfully shot, especially the time-lapse of the night sky filled with lanterns. How did you guys manage to capture that?
Although I belong to Vadodara in Gujarat, since the last 10 odd years I had never been to Gujarat during the Uttarayan festival. When we first went in 2014 and when the day’s shoot ended, we began wrapping up. Just then, we noticed a lantern floating in the air and soon we saw hundreds of them fill the whole sky. We were thrilled to see what Ahmedabad manages to create during those two evenings. Every terrace floats a lantern and the evening melds into a breath-taking visual spectacle. Our job was to capture them and Piyush and Harshbir did it so aesthetically. I think the entire credit for that set of visuals goes to the city of Ahmedabad.
 
What’s your favourite anecdote from the whole experience of making this film?
I have two actually. First was that after completing the first cut of the film, I thought of showing it to my wife. So I arranged a small screening only for her. When the film ended, she hugged me tightly since all the hard work seemed to have paid off. I knew it then that if she liked it then we will win something for sure. Second was when Arya Menon, a producer and owner at Mumbai-based production house Remarquer, pitched in to be the producer of this film. She saw potential and her coming on board suddenly gave us wings and we could do a lot more.
 
What does winning the Al Jazeera award mean to you, and to the film?
For us independent filmmakers — every film festival win further encourages us to keep making films in our own way. When it comes to documentaries, Al Jazeera is a big name to reckon with. For us, this award translates into a lot of recognition. But the idea is to make the film travel and to show it to as many people as possible.