Born Into Brothels – an Amnesty International Film Fest review

Winner of the Audience Award for Pittsburgh’s Amnesty International’s Film Fest, Born Into Brothels, chronicles two documentary filmmakers’ time in Sonagchi, Calcutta and the relationships they developed with children of prostitutes who work the city's notorious red light district.

Directors Zana Briski and Ross Kaufmann document the amazing transformation of the children they come to know, delving into issues of poverty, abuse and a general feeling of despair that pervades the area. Professional photographer Briski originally came to Sonagchi to photograph the women of the brothels. But after befriending the children, she began to give them lessons on the craft, composition techniques - and eventually their own cameras. Armed with their new toys and individual perspectives, the children set out to document life in the red light district.

The photographs that resulted were some of the most honest, painful, beautiful, personal moments captured that could arguably not have been done by Briski herself, even though she had lived in the brothels for three years prior. Briski’s idea to let the children take off and document life from their own perspectives broke through the usual limits of outsider documentary photography and opened up an otherwise inaccessible art to those with a different story to tell. As a picture may be worth a thousand words, Briski helped amplify the voices of the voiceless.

Another storyline running through the movie was Briski’s attempts to help the children escape the futures that seemed to loom – lives of prostitution, violence, drug abuse and depression. She anxiously wound through the mazes of bureaucracy to try to help the kids get accepted to boarding schools, while publicizing their photos in New York City, and eventually procuring art shows (in the US and India) and a scholarship for one of the children, Avigit, to participate in a World Press Photo Foundation conference in Amersterdam to gain first-hand professional experience.

The film ends with a "where are they now" sequence, relaying the success some of the children had, staying in school and pursuing their art. It also relays the failures - some of the children dropped out and went back to the brothels, and one was never even permitted to leave. The person that accompanied me to the film thought this was a bad ending, that it objectified the kids, sending a disempowering, fatalistic message that there’s no hope and nothing we can do. Or, that there’s so little hope and the struggle is too difficult in the face of such incredible odds.

But I saw it a different way. I thought it showed that even though Briski resorted to trying to help each kid individually out of seeming desperation (and both of us agreed we probably would have done the same thing in that situation), that it shows that it’s not enough - that problems of poverty and symptoms of oppression can’t be stopped by helping one person at a time. That change must be larger and more systemic than that. It strangely gave me hope, whether intentional or not, the film was a clear example of how charity does not equal large-scale or permanent change.

– Marie Skoczylas

Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Chapter of Amnesty International