Utran Conversations

Utran Conversations is a 3-channel, 30-minute, experimental documentary film by Huw Davies and Philip Ranjit Basi, set against the backdrop of the world’s largest kite festival in Gujarat, India. It explores the social and cultural contexts for a huge visual spectacle which marks the transition from winter to summer. The Festival serves to bind together different communities and crosses religious divides. It also provides a complex infrastructure for the employment of thousands of homeworkers engaged in the in the manufacture and distribution of kites and associated apparel. Utran Conversations also comments on the environmental impact, particularly to the local wildlife as the balance of the natural ecosystem is disturbed by the presence of the glass coated threads which are used in the kite flying and fighting rituals, even causing human fatalities. Exploring these themes and issues the film interweaves a multiple series of ‘conversations’ with key players from kite makers to kite flyers and wildlife NGO’s, set around the event of the Utran Festival itself.

Utran Conversations was supported by Artcore and DMARC and produced as part of an international artists’ research residency at the Reliance Arts Centre, Baroda in January 2019. It was exhibited as part of the exhibition Otherlings, (Artcore, Derby. October/November 2019) and S.H.E.D at InDialogue Symposium, (Nottingham Contemporary. November 2019). Selected and shown in competition at: Crown Wood International Film Festival (Kolkata, March 2020); New York Indian Film Festival (July/August 2020); Pune Short Film Festival (December 2020); Goa Short Film Festival (December 2020); Lake City International Film Festival (Delhi, December 2020).

CC0 1.0 Universal