Movie Friday

This past week, I saw an amazing film called Born into Brothels. It took home the Best Documentary honors at the 2005 Academy Awards.

Set in the red light district of Calcutta, the film tells the story of a western photographer who moved to India to capture this little known segment of Indian life on film. As she states in the film, the only way she was going to get photos was to move into the slums with her subjects. Otherwise, she would never gain their trust and get a real view of their lives. As she began spending day after day in the district, she began to notice the children that were everywhere. Being children of prostitutes, they were basically street kids with very little in the way of education or normal lives.

Zana, the photographer, buys some inexpensive cameras and distributes them to the kids. She then starts a weekly photo class where the kids get to see their developed pictures and critique them. The children are intelligent, quick to learn, and become excellent story tellers of the world in which they live. She takes them on short field trips to the local zoo and to the ocean for the first time. Eventually, Zana realizes that the only way to help the children is to get them enrolled in good schools where an education will give them a way out of their certain bleak future. At the same time, she puts together an exhibition of their work in New York which draws rave reviews and critical praise.

This film is powerful on so many levels. The images of India are fascinating, disturbing, uplifting, and beautiful simultaneously. The children are profound well beyond their years and my heart was aching at the end of the film with the hope that some of them will make it out of the slums one day. With a small gesture like a photo class, Zana changes the lives of these children and shows them a way out of their dreary existence. It is nothing short of magnificent.

Have a great weekend everyone. Cuidate.