Addison Thomas Wong
The world we’re introduced to in the Oscar-winning documentary, Born Into Brothels, is dark and sinister. It’s a world where animals aren’t the only ones chained up. Children, themselves, seem to have few human liberties.
In Calcutta’s red light district, the brothels are filled with innocent children, vulnerable to the realities, or rather the horrors of life. Featured in this documentary are 8 children, all offspring of prostitutes. Their lives are defined by unending lists of chores to complete, people to serve, and social responsibilities to fulfill just as every other child who has ever been born into this bleak district in India.
Behind the positive, pleasant façade they force upon themselves is a common desire to escape from what are inevitably their homes, their families, and their fates – a yearning to scream for help from whoever may be able to save them.
And although you get the vibe that people are largely unmoved by their children’s plight, there are more than a few who helplessly worry about what is ahead for their precious ones, and if there is any chance that their children may be spared from what is considered a life of poverty.
Born Intro Brothels also tracks the journey of New York based photographer, Zana Briski, who co-directs and co-produces this documentary feature, as she strives to make a positive difference in the lives of the 8 children. She starts off teaching the kids photography then tries to get them education, a feat terribly difficult to accomplish in Calcutta, with many institutions’ particularity towards the more fortunate background of their students. But Briski’s effort pull through and the results are life changing.
Co-directors, Ross Kaufman and Briski, bring out the essence of these children’s lives and life, in general, in Calcutta’s red light district, brilliantly in this documentary. Any member of the audience can easily connect with and appreciate the lives and personalities of these children, as well as the bonds forged in this community of adolescents. This is made especially so with the various interview clips with the 8 featured children, during which they share their feelings and opinions from simple events in their lives to the most heartbreaking of their experiences.
Quotes like “My mother… grandmother… great-grandmother was a prostitute, so I have to be a prostitute”, “my father smokes all day, but I try to love him a little” and “there is nothing called ‘hope’ left in my life” that come up every 5 minutes and cast upon us something deep to think about for the 20 minutes that follow, add to the distressful experience of coming to terms with life in the district.
What was intelligent about the film is the idea of giving the children their own cameras to express their individual perspective of life. A man on the street, the water that flows down a drain, the little girl sitting along the corridor. These seemingly commonplace and insignificant details don’t escape the notice of the children. This perfect blend of the unfortunate life of the children and the humour and cheerfulness that is alive in them and can be seen in their shots give life to what could have been a dry portrayal of the children’s wretched lives. Every chapter of the film starts and concludes with a collage of the children’s photography work. The result is powerful.
There’s one scene in the film where the children are offered the opportunity for a fieldtrip to the zoo, and one of the children starts sharing his feelings about seeing the animals kept in cages, how they are fed just once a day, and how, on top of that, they can be offered plastic bags for that one meal. You hear a sense of relation in his voice, a sense that he feels what the animals feel – to be caged and abused like they’ve been.
Such scenes make watching the documentary surreal, heartbreaking and, to a certain extent, traumatising. This is not another typical sob story.
Besides the Oscar, Born Into Brothels was honoured with the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and the 2004 National Board of Review Award for Best Documentary, among many other distinguished accolades. Artistically, practically and technically, this documentary is a beautifully crafted film. It’s a film that has the potential to make not just a difference in the lives of the people in Calcutta, but a positive social impact to the issue of racism globally, as we are given the opportunity to explore and appreciate members of the Indian community.
Not many films are able to give us something deep to think about or to move us sufficiently for us to want to be part of a force that makes a major societal impact. But this film embodies all of these aspects and is, without doubt, a brilliant masterpiece.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Movie Details
Opens: May 3
Runtime: 85 mins
Language: English
Cast: Shanti Das, Puja Mukerjee
Directors: Ross Kauffman & Zana Briski
All photos courtesy of Archer Entertainment.