the day they banned spring
why did lahore’s kites fall from the skies?
For several centuries, if not longer, Basant was a beloved kite flying festival in Lahore, marking the arrival of spring. Every year, thousands would take to their rooftops, filling the air with a flurry of colour and sound. Basant was so old, in fact, that its actual origins are buried in myth.
In 2007, after a series of serious injuries caused by sharpened kite strings, the government of Pakistan put a ban on Basant, and flying kites. It lasts till this day, rendering hundreds of years of cultural tradition obsolete, and many artisans, practicing this craft for generations - jobless.
What happened to cause such catastrophic loss to a city's cultural heritage? What did Basant mean for Lahore's citizens and what happened to the traditional kite makers that populated the old city for generations? What did it mean to me?
Told through the voices of former kite makers, testimonies of victims caught in kite accidents, and my own personal family archive, The Day They Banned Spring aims to showcase the vibrance and poetry of a festival that captivated a city for centuries.
- Daniyal Raheal, Director
The film will utilise two different styles of primary material:
Documentary Archive of the events we cover: whether this be news clips or Daniyal’s personal archive.
Cultural Archive from sources such as films, TV shows and pop culture, showing fictional versions of Basant as it existed in the Pakistani (and Indian) civic imagination. For instance, this clip of “Patang Baaz Sajna Se" (To My Kite Flying Lover), which became an anthem during Basant.
Visually, we’re inspired by a recent wave of animated documentary that combines hand drawn re-enactments of personal memoir with original source material such as cutout, i.e Diana Ngyuen's Love, Dad. We'd also like to firmly situate our subject inside its cultural and historical context via archive: i.e I Am Not Your Negro.
Daniyal’s voiceover will carry the narrative, as he revisit his family archives and archival footage from the old city. In between, we’ll weave through the testimonials of kitemakers and other voices, using a unique animation style inspired by the painter Dr. Ajaz Anwar.
In a Pakistan marred by the instability of living under alternating military dictatorships and failed democratic experiments, Basant became the emblem of a counterculture, It was joy for a stifled society. For many, it became a form of escapist romanticism, an opportunity to rise above the mundane to experience a moment of unbridled joy. Even the word “patang”, denoting the kite which required the most skill to fly, refers to a moth determined to approach a burning flame.
The Day They Banned Spring explores how human greed, religious xenophobia and government mismanagement led to the loss of this piece of beautiful cultural history.
Daniyal Raheal is an award winning director and actor from Pakistan.
His 2013 project, Vote for Pakistan, won him the best public service campaign at the Pakistan advertising industry awards. His campaign Rawaan, a partnership with Telenor, was shot all across Pakistan, and was an international success, garnering millions of views on social media. Daniyal has also produced multiple advertising campaigns for clients such as Rocket Internet and the Punjab Government.
Daniyal has an acting career spanning over two decades. He has performed in Iran for an international theater festival in a play called Can't Pay Won't Pay by Sarmad Sahbhai. His films, includiing The Motorcycle Girl, and Operation 021, have been a part of a multitude of well acclaimed local television serials. Daniyal produced his own puppet show for a local brand called Notti Nani and Chang, and has been in over fifty television commercials nationally for brands such as Nestle, Unilever and Coca-Cola including others.
See past work.
Sparsh’s work has toured institutions such as The Victoria and Albert Museum, BFI Southbank, and ForumDesImages in Paris, and has been supported by the British Council, Australia Council for the Arts, Doc Society, Ford Foundation and the CatchLight Fellowship amongst others. In 2023, Sparsh was one of the 12 factual producers selected for VicScreen’s inaugural “Originate Factual” incubator. In 2024, he will spend 4 months being mentored by Golden Globe Award winning studio Les Films D’Ici Méditerranée in Montpellier, with the support of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust for Emerging Australian Artists.
Sparsh spends his time between Melbourne and Delhi and is currently in funded development on his debut feature, Fear and Loathing in Kathmandu.
See past work.
Thank you! Please contact us at sparshahuja9@gmail.com for more infomation, and for collaboration enquiries.