Thursday, March 01, 2007

I finished seeing the movie "Born into Brothels" I definitely urge you guys to see it. It is a documentary and a commendable work by Zana Briski.
Zana is a photographer in real life, she visited calcutta to take pictures of life in the red light area "sonagacchi". she was living there on and off taking pictures and just learning about the life there. She got this idea to teach the children photography. The idea was to see the life there through their eyes. She gave each one of them a camera and taught them the basics. every week they would then develop the photos and review them. Zana in this movie takes along a translator all the time to translate from Bengali to English. Zana also takes these kids to a zoo, later she also arranges an overnight trip to a beach. These kids are taken there one to take photographs and two to see the world outside which they wouldn't have seen otherwise. Zana understands the bad environment these kids are growing up in but also realises she cannot really do anything. Slowly she gets the idea that she could try and put them in schools. It is a long process, they don't have ration cards, the schools wont accept them. They also need money. She goes back to New York, puts together an exhibition of the photos taken by these very kids, they are very well received and thats how she raises money. The kids see it on TV, the exhibition in NewYork.
These are about 9 kids, 5 girls and 4 boys all around the age of 9-10. Finally she gets their rations cards done, at one point they have shown Zana crying because of the way she is hassled at the ration card office. These kids also have to get an HIV test done. Finally the 4 girls get an admission in Sabera foundation school. 1 boy gets selected to go to Amsterdam by virtue of his excellent photography skills. It is another story how Zana gets his passport. He really enjoys his trip and when he comes back he choses to join the hope foundation school. They other boy who gets admission is not allowed to join the school by his father. Of the four girls in school, 1 is pulled out by her mom, one comes back on her own accord, one runs away, and only is still there, she is doing well.
I applaud Zana for her hardwork, goodwill and persistence, She was awarded an oscar for the movie in 2005. The point is of the hundreds of kids in sonagacchi, only 9 got a chance and out of which only 2 could make it, it is a small number but for the 2 children it made all the difference.
Zana is also an example of how her work has helped others to come up in life. I wish I could do something like that.

http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/aboutus/?page=zanabriski