when a daughter chooses to tell the story of a father venturing into uncharted territory it ought to win hearts thats what happened when raghu rai an unframed portrait a 55minute docu on photographer extraordinaire raghu rai was screened in kolkata recently directed by his daughter avani it spans his journey from home to the world we caught up with the fatherdaughter duo on the sidelines of the screening heres what they had to say excerpts avani what made you choose your father as the subject of your film avani i was 18 when i went to mumbai for studies and whenever i used to be back home in delhi almost once every month i would fiddle with papas cameras that he wouldnt use so he would tell me tujhe use karna hai toh use kar and thats how my father gave me a camera and so every time i was home i would start rolling it and film whatever i saw at home for instance i would film when we all sat together for dinner and then when i returned to mumbai i would start watching it so after a good one and a half years i realised that maybe i should do something with all the footage i have and then i got hold of a lot of archival material that he had shot and thought its a daughters responsibility to tell so many intriguing stories of a father and how he sees india through his lenswhat about the initial struggle that you faced while planning to shoot the docuavani to capture my father was not my only desire i wanted to do something more than that between showing the relationship of a father and a daughter i was fighting with idfa international documentary film festival amsterdam and others who said they wanted only raghu rai in the film which incidentally also has me in it even though its not perfect i knew i would still make the film because i hardly knew anything else so then theres one angle of the daughter and one angle of raghu rai the photographer telling about how he perceived india for 50 years and then kashmir which is very important to me as it also forms the parallel narrative in the film a lot of other aspects came about in shaping up the film it took me over six years to shoot this film and each of the narratives mentioned in the film didnt just develop overnight it kept developing over all these years and finally we were able to finish the film last yearwhat was your fathers first reaction on hearing that you wanted to make a film on himavani i think papa will be able to tell this betterraghu i didnt believe her at all when she first told me that she wanted to make a film on me i thought i have given her a camera and let her play with it a bit and that all this