Spring is coming but the sky of Lahore will be as pale and empty as it uses to be in winter. The colours which kites gave to the spring have long been lost amid chaos of rules and regulations. The festival of Basant which once used to be boasted by Lahore; captured the attention of people worldwide and gave multiple reasons to people to cheer and celebrate has been banned by the government. Just how this ban affected a common person’s life is the subject of upcoming indie film Hun Ki Tera Zor Ni Gudiya – Kites Grounded.
The passionate and inspiring team of Kites Grounded comprised of the producer Seema Hameed, director Murtaza Ali, supporting writer Aneeza Syed and star cast Tahira Babar attended a workshop in FiLUMS 2014 on this Saturday. Ali Noor, the founding member and lead singer of band Noori, also accompanied the team as a special guest.
The film tells the tale of a kite maker (played by Irfan Khossat) who is losing his passion out of great distress of dying festival of Basant and apathy of society and government as told by the director Murtaza Ali to the attendees of the workshop. He shared how he and his wife, Seema Hameed who is also the producer of the film, came across the idea of making film about their city, Lahore. According to Ali, they looked for various stories and ideas for their film and kept on rejecting one idea after the other. Finally they selected the story of banned Basant festival and its impact on life of a kite maker. “This is a passionate and humanistic story”, Ali explained.
“Film making is a difficult task and it involves efforts of the whole team”, told by Hameed while sharing her views on film making on a question from the audience. She told that she put all of her savings on the film and that she did it just to follow her passion. Now she is looking forward to the response of cinema goers and how her film resonates with the people. She penned the film herself and took the help of Aneeza Syed for writing the dialogues. She took the responsibility of writing for the film because of the sheer dearth of writers in Pakistan. “There is a significant difference between writing for the film and for TV and these nuances are understood by few people,” told Hameed.
Ali Noor, the one half of band Noori, mesmerized the audience with his motivational talk and story of how he got linked with the movie. Noor is making a song for the film and it will be a surprising gift for the fans of Noori who usually wait for long spells of time to listen a new track from the band. He is the first person other than the director-producer couple who have watched the film and liked it. According to Ali, “film is a form of art which has faded away from our culture.” He hoped that this film will reconnect the society with the disconnected art and values and will be a different experience for the cinema goers.
In the workshop, the trailer of the film was played and was received with a huge applause by the attendees. The recitation of Heer in the background of trailer cast a spell. The film is expected to hit cinemas in April this year.
We, team of Galaxy Lollywood hope it will be a good and successful movie as it is related with a common man and close to our social and cultural values. Cinema in Pakistan is trying to achieve its own identity and it will be achieved through diverse and unique stories originated from all strata of the society.
By: Zeeshan Mahmood
Lovely read.