The locations we chose, no film had been shot there before, so it was a new thing for the crowd. Also I like shooting my films in real locations — and real locations are nice to look at, but they are also small and claustrophobic. There was a place called Jhagde Wali Mathiya where around 10,000-12,000 people had gathered. No matter how much the bouncers would intervene but they would keep talking, someone would shout action in between or say cut, so it was very messy. Within a month of signing the contract, we had started shooting. It had one which said ‘True story for you: Urgent’ from a sender called Ishani Banerjee. The entire film has been shot in sync sound; I don’t dub my films. It was like watching two musicians perform.. The big challenge was — what to do with the film Would a studio take a film about an ageing professor, suspended from his university for being gay Who would buy it A broker fixed up a meeting with Eros. I kept asking them to go back but they wouldn’t listen.
The film is quiet, poetic, but outside there would be hungama. So I checked my junk mail. That night was quite scary. In the times to come, if the world becomes a slightly better place because of the debates that my films generate, I think as a filmmaker, I will have fulfilled a duty towards my children. The film doesn’t really point fingers, but we wanted to shoot in peace. The challenge was to find that place. I had five-six ideas, but narrated this one first. Then I got my friend Shailesh Singh to put in the seed capital. I opened it and read it and the story caught my fancy.People in general were very welcoming. Now how do you silence these people They are not used to the discipline of filmmaking.We were shooting in excessively cold weather; we would be freezing, as a lot of it was shot was night.The least of my challenges was getting my actors to perform, I had country’s finest actors. Aligarh Single Side PVDC Coated BOPP Film “came” to Hansal at a time when he was at a loss about what to film next; this was when he was editing Citylights.
I called Ishani to Mumbai to meet with Appu (Apoorva Asrani, who was editing Citylights) and me. We found a similar place in Bareilly and in other towns in UP. Hansal narrates how he made Aligarh: I woke up one morning and there were no mails in my inbox. The kind of films I make are not only satisfying cinematically, but also raise some questions.After his highly acclaimed films Shahid and Citylights, Hansal Mehta has bettered his own oeuvre with Aligarh, a look at the life of Aligarh Muslim University professor Ramchandra Siras, and his fight against persecution for being homosexual. We were worried that if a mishap takes place, then not only will the shooting fall apart, there will be a big scene and we will have to leave Bareilly. It became an evening thing ke ‘Chalo shooting dekhne chaltey hain’. I asked Appu if he wanted to write the story and he agreed. Their response was instantaneous: They said, ‘Let’s make it’.We wanted to shoot it in Aligarh but we were worried that the university and the people might be antagonistic
hterbaaigo