Songs of India I
Kids with cameras document their lives in "Born Into Brothels"

In 1998, London-born New York-based photographer Zana Briski traveled to India to document the lives of female sex workers in a notorious red-light district of Calcutta. What she found there was the hidden world of the children of prostitutes who live out their lives in the shadows of the brothels. Attempting to ingratiate herself with the prostitutes themselves was difficult for Briski, but the curious kids befriended her immediately. And Briski responded with something far more creative and compassionate than merely snapping their pictures and going on her way; she bought the kids point-and-shoot cameras of their own, gave them informal classes on how to use them, and let them document their own world—with often astonishing results. Instead of reducing them to silent images in her own work, she provided each of these most marginalized and invisible children with a means of finding his or her unique voice.

The story of these children, and the stories they tell about themselves via their cameras, is the subject of this compelling, Oscar-winning documentary by Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman. In mostly video footage Briski shot herself, we meet five girls and three boys from 10 to 14 who became Briski's photography students. Talking about themselves and their friends and families, they're as bright, observant, mischievous, and spirited as children everywhere. We see them in Briski's class, working with contact sheets and selecting their best images. And we see their photographs, some happy accidents, many extremely sophisticated, as the kids rove among the narrow streets capturing the essence of their world.

Theirs is often a hard life. Crammed into a single room with mothers, grandmothers, and siblings, the children are unschooled, unpaid servants, subject to verbal abuse from cranky prostitutes, or beatings from drunken men. All are impoverished. The girls are expected to join their mothers "in the line," with no other options for their futures. Drugs, murder, and suicide are not uncommon in their households.

Yet the movie is rarely grim. The charge of delight as the kids learn to express themselves on film is infectious. Briski organizes field trips out of the inner city to the zoo, and the seashore. She labors tirelessly to get the children accepted into boarding schools, despite an overwhelming bureaucratic fetish for red tape and paperwork, and the schools' policy about shunning the children of "criminals."

In New York, Briski organizes a swanky gallery show of the kids' work to raise money for their education. At a similar show in Calcutta that the children themselves can attend, the transformative effect of finding themselves admired and respected is extraordinary. Exuberant and at times heartbreaking, this is a vivid chronicle of unforgettable lives most of the rest of the world never sees.

BORN INTO BROTHELS A film by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski. A THINKFilm release. Rated R. 85 minutes. (***1/2)
Review published in Good Times, February 24, 2005