[NV Greens] Fwd: Film: 'Born Into Brothels'

Sat Mar 12 22:46:31 PST 2005

>
>
>Running Red Lights
>
>By Matthew Scott Kelemen, AlterNet
>Posted on March 11, 2005, Printed on March 11, 2005
><http://www.alternet.org/story/21470/>
>
>Was anybody expecting Million Dollar Baby to sweep the
>Academy Awards? Once Clint Eastwood's euthanasia drama
>won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress
>and Best Supporting Actor, a consensus began to emerge
>in the media that Academy voters went sentimental this
>year. It was even suggested in some quarters that said
>sentimental streak extended to the Best Documentary
>category.
>
>But anyone who actually saw Born Into Brothels, from the
>inaugural audience at Sundance to the critics screening
>it for this week's wide theatrical release, knows that
>there is little mushiness in the film.
>
>"I don't think it is a sentimental film at all," says
>filmmaker Zana Briski. "I think it's a really honest
>film about these kids in the red-light district, and it
>shows everything from their joy and humor and beauty to
>the really harsh reality of their lives. I would not
>describe the film as sentimental, although I would
>describe it as a love story. I think it really is filled
>with love."
>
>Despite Briski's insistence, the film is touching when
>not heart-wrenching in its depiction of the Calcutta
>children's plight. Co-directed by Briski and Ross
>Kauffman, Born Into Brothels captures her determination
>to save the kids by first inspiring them creatively, and
>then figuring out how to get them educations.
>
>"It was an incredible experience," says Briski. "This
>whole project has really been all about empowering
>children through photography, and that's why I started a
>foundation called Kids With Cameras. I didn't know what
>I was doing when I started this. I was just responding
>to the kids around me, and they were very curious about
>my camera. It's really turned into something else, which
>is amazing."
>
>Making a film, much less winning an Academy Award for
>it, was not on the photographer's mind when she made her
>first trip east. "I went to India in '95 to photograph
>different women's issues and whatever I found," she
>says. Briski documented problems of infanticide and
>selective abortion, "And then in '97 I went to Calcutta
>because I had photographs in a show. The next day
>someone took me to the red-light district. Prostitution
>wasn't anything I had planned to photograph. Even that
>part of it was a real surprise."
>
>Then Briski discovered the children, who were fascinated
>by her camera. Avijit, Gour, Kochi, Manik, Puja, Shanti,
>Suchitra and Tapasi (there was a ninth child who was not
>present during much of the filming) became her focus,
>her proteges, and then her crusade. "I was really just
>responding to people asking me for help." She says. "It
>was quite simple: 'Take my child, take them somewhere
>safe.' It was the women and the chilldren. I just went
>around asking people. That's when I found out that
>nobody really wants to empower these kids. Or these
>women."
>
>"Zana Auntie," as she was known to the children, was
>strongly affected by their impending fate. Ranging from
>ages 8 to 12 when she met them, their options were few.
>The three boys, with their adult personalities already
>emerging, were heading for a life that gave them the
>option of becoming pimps, thieves, drug dealers and
>users, and sellers of illegal alcohol.
>
>The girls, however, wrestled with the knowledge that
>they soon would be "on the line" ñ start prostituting
>themselves. Some reveal that they are already feeling
>pressure from the prostitutes, or even their relatives.
>They live in the same rooms in which their mothers
>conduct business. Life is cheap, money talks, filth is
>everywhere, and profanity prevails.
>
>Briski started teaching the kids photography at the tail
>end of one of her trips. She bought cameras in the
>States, and returned to Calcutta in 2000 with renewed
>determination.
>
>She also brought a video camera and began to film. Had
>she not contacted Kauffman, though, Briski would have
>been unable to play her crucial role in front of the
>camera. "He was my boyfriend at the time," she says. "He
>loved film. He also loves kids. He was editing, and he
>really didn't want to edit even though he's great at it.
>It was a very intimate situation he came into, as I had
>spent year building trust with these kids."
>
>"I remember getting there," recalls Kauffman. "Going to
>the hotel, Zana opening the door and saying 'We're
>leaving in 20 minutes.' I was like, 'OK.' I didn't think
>I was going to shoot that day, but I brought the video
>camera just in case.
>
>"And of course, I got there and all I did was shoot. I
>met the kids, and they immediately took me in. I had a
>great time, and I actually have a photo of me, Puja and
>Kochi from that first day. And then Avijit invited us
>over for lunch in his room in the brothel. His
>grandmother made us lunch. It was a lovely day."
>
>Kauffman shot expressive night scenes on digital video,
>which were used in the film's haunting establishing
>shots. The luminescence of the red lights create a mood
>of quiet, urban desperation and moody melancholia, into
>which Kauffman weaved close-ups of the children's eyes:
>this is what they see. Five years from now, if nothing
>was done, the girls would be on the streets.
>
>"We knew that going into it," he says. "They knew where
>they were headed, too. When Zana was teaching the kids,
>it was very clear. It wasn't like she went in there to
>save kids. And she didn't end up saving them, she ended
>up helping them help themselves. This was never planned
>out."
>
>Briski tried hard to get the kids into schools. As
>children of prostitutes and criminals, they were
>essentially untouchable. Kauffman's camera follows her
>as her attempts are rejected, and as she battles the
>bureaucracy in order to provide the proper credentials
>and paperwork that will get them accepted into school.
>We see the kids' exhilaration when they take a field
>trip to a beach. We cannot help but feel their bashful
>pride as they are shown a front-page story about them in
>a newspaper, or when they see the prints that will be
>shown at the first of what will be many exhibitions of
>their photographs.
>
>We also witness a lot of profanity-laced, verbal
>confrontations between the women of the brothels. It's
>shocking, and then funny, when Kauffman brings up the
>fact that he didn't understand the language. "It was
>almost easier because in a way, they start screaming and
>yelling ñ and that happens all the time, by the way,
>that's not an unusual occurrence ñ and as it's going on,
>I know they're screaming and yelling but I don't know
>what they're saying. In a way it's almost easier because
>I'm filming the emotion of this scene, not the action
>itself."
>
>What the film doesn't capture fully is the aftermath.
>Since being showcased at Sundance in 2004, Briski has
>parlayed the attention that the film received into a
>non-stop publicity and fundraising campaign. Kids with
>Cameras is now a full-fledged organization, with
>workshops planned for the children of Jerusalem, Haiti,
>and Cairo. Briski and Kauffman have been zig-zagging
>about the country, organizing and presenting fundraising
>exhibitions and screenings. "We're planning to build a
>school in Calcutta specifically for children of
>prostitutes," she says. "It will be a high-powered
>school of leadership and the arts. The kids are already
>helping me find other kids that want to be enrolled.
>Some of them are the siblings of the kids in the film."
>
>The two plan to head back to Calcutta in April to look
>for land for the school, and Briski says that Cameron
>Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity, has
>agreed to design the building pro bono. Her pet project,
>however, is to produce a book featuring the children's
>work. "I'm going to do it myself. ... I want to do a
>real high-quality book. I'm looking for somewhere in the
>world that still does photogravures [a technique
>involving chemicals and engraved plates], and I'm not
>having much luck. It's a particular printing process
>that I think doesn't exist anymore. I think the last
>printer just closed down in Japan. I'm still holding out
>for that printing press because it's very, very
>beautiful. It's very rich. It's a very beautiful way of
>printing."
>
>The book would build on the attention that the film has
>brought to these children. What winning an Oscar has
>done for the children is inestimable in terms of drawing
>publicity to Kids With Cameras, and the pay-it-forward
>effects of proactive, creative approaches to solving the
>problems of poverty. The children in Born Into Brothels
>are caught in a cycle that they could not escape because
>there was no opportunity for empowerment until Briski
>conceived of and provided one. There are many Zana
>Aunties in the world, unsung but providing the vehicles
>to escape that cycle.
>
>For all of them, the scene in which Avijit cheerfully
>admonishes the driver of the cab that will take him out
>of the brothels to the airport for a conference in
>Amsterdam ñ and his future as a photographer ñ is
>universally symbolic.
>
>"Please drive slowly," he says. "I won't get there if
>there's an accident. I won't fulfill my dreams."
>
>(c) 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights
>reserved.
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand