Born into Brothels
I went to the foreign film club tonight. My season ticket is for Saturday night, but our director is putting on a jazz coffeehouse tomorrow night and the chime choir has three pieces in it, so I went to tonight's show on "standby." A lot of people from my UU church have tickets, and I ran into two of them in the standby line. Oddly, one had a friend's Friday night ticket in her purse, and she offered it to me so I could go in and get a decent seat on an aisle. (Because of my bad knees, I can't sit in the rows in most theaters -- I have to have an aisle seat where I can stretch out my legs at least every few minutes.) I saved two more seats, so all three of us had much better seats than we would have otherwise.
This month's movie was stunning. Born into Brothels is a prizewinning documentary about the Kids with Cameras project, which started when photographer Zana Briski was in Calcutta doing a story on the prostitutes of the red light district. In the course of photographing the women she got to know the kids. She thought it would be great to see their world through their own eyes, so she started a class for eight 10-14 year olds, giving each child a camera and teaching them photography.
The story is heartbreaking. The kids live in unbelievable squalor, far worse than the worst inner-city ghettos in the US. They have no opportunities -- school isn't an option for most of them, and they have to work long hours to help support the family. The girls go "on the line" when they are 13 or 14, or even younger. The shot in the movie of a girl who is still a child walking with a man down the hall toward an apartment was devastating.
Briski worked to get some of them into schools, but it wasn't easy because no Indian boarding schools will take the children of prostitutes. She finally found a school run by the Sabera Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to changing the lives of street children, which accepted three girls, and another school that took two boys. One of those two, a talented artist named Avijit, has just begun his first year of high school in the US, after receiving a four year scholarship; of the three girls, only one, Kochi, is still in school at the Sabera Foundation where she is learning English and computer skills. One of the other two was pulled out by her mother, and the other left "of her own accord." One other girl is in a home for girls -- the website says nothing about the current whereabouts of any of the others. Although it's only a couple of years later -- the film premiered just over a year ago -- it's obvious that the girls have matured, and there's no question about their ultimate fate.
This month's movie was stunning. Born into Brothels is a prizewinning documentary about the Kids with Cameras project, which started when photographer Zana Briski was in Calcutta doing a story on the prostitutes of the red light district. In the course of photographing the women she got to know the kids. She thought it would be great to see their world through their own eyes, so she started a class for eight 10-14 year olds, giving each child a camera and teaching them photography.
The story is heartbreaking. The kids live in unbelievable squalor, far worse than the worst inner-city ghettos in the US. They have no opportunities -- school isn't an option for most of them, and they have to work long hours to help support the family. The girls go "on the line" when they are 13 or 14, or even younger. The shot in the movie of a girl who is still a child walking with a man down the hall toward an apartment was devastating.
Briski worked to get some of them into schools, but it wasn't easy because no Indian boarding schools will take the children of prostitutes. She finally found a school run by the Sabera Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to changing the lives of street children, which accepted three girls, and another school that took two boys. One of those two, a talented artist named Avijit, has just begun his first year of high school in the US, after receiving a four year scholarship; of the three girls, only one, Kochi, is still in school at the Sabera Foundation where she is learning English and computer skills. One of the other two was pulled out by her mother, and the other left "of her own accord." One other girl is in a home for girls -- the website says nothing about the current whereabouts of any of the others. Although it's only a couple of years later -- the film premiered just over a year ago -- it's obvious that the girls have matured, and there's no question about their ultimate fate.
