Turning Despair Into Hope. An Alternative To Paralysis. Born into Brothels Movie

Just saw the movie Born into Brothels by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman. Been thinking of watching it for a while since the CBC has kept promoting it and didn’t because I thought it would just be another story of humanity’s greed, selfishness, and cruelty.

Finally decided to see it. Very glad I did. While it did cover those topics it did much more.

It was a phenomenal movie, very moving, very inspirational and not contrived. It won an academy award as best documentary. A must see.

Here is the trailer

Zana Briski, a NY based photojournalist gave camera’s to children born in brothels in the red light district of Calcutta, India, (when I was growing up it was known as the black hole of Calcutta because of the extreme poverty) and taught them how to take pictures and created a movie out of it. To see hope in children abandoned by Indian society, who are living in such extreme poverty and abusive circumstances, i.e., one child’s aunt wanted to pimp her out and another child’s father wanted to do the same, is amazing.

Instead of saying “there’s nothing I can do, people are suffering everywhere, I’m helpless”, Zana decided to turn despair into hope, and created this film and got the children’s photo’s in exhibits to raise money for their schooling.

Their photographs are prisms into their souls, rather than anthropological curiosities or primitive imagery, and a true testimony of the power of the indelible creative spirit.

Here’s one quote from one of the children, Gour

I want to show in pictures how people live in this city. I want to put across the behavior of man.

Instead of being a media vulture, Zana’s a media angel. What would the world be like with more people like her?