Documentary. Directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman. 85 minutes. In Bengali and English with English subtitles.

Review by Carla Meyer, San Francisco Chronicle

The most remarkable thing about the entirely remarkable "Born Into Brothels" is its lack of easy sentiment. Set in Calcutta's red-light district, where 10-year-old girls worry about being sold by their fathers, the film might have gone for the water works. But "Brothels,'' an Academy Award nominee for best documentary, favours a clear-eyed pragmatism befitting its unforgiving milieu.

Photographer and filmmaker Zana Briski of London directed the picture with Ross Kauffman, but she's no mere observer. "Brothels'' follows Briski's efforts to teach photography to children in the red-light district, and later, to try to sell their work to pay for boarding schools.

Before our eyes, Briski confronts and answers questions of exploitation that can shadow profilers of the downtrodden. She is not just documenting these unfortunate children, but letting them document, and therefore consider, their own circumstances as she introduces the possibility of escape. Is there self-interest in her campaign? Certainly there is. She made a film about it. But that hardly matters if her work can save even one girl from prostitution.

Briski's lack of smoothness makes her compelling. The children can frustrate her. Many of her sentences start, "You should know by now...'' She's not a counsellor or even a trained teacher, and she wonders aloud why she involved herself in the lives of children abandoned by most aid agencies. But her students, addressing her as "Zana Auntie,'' adore her for allowing them a means of expression, even if one of them keeps taking photos at night without a flash.

These kids show amazing resiliency. Puja, whose father beats her mother for failing to give him booze money, is a spirited young girl willing to photograph people on the street. (Inhabitants of and visitors to the red-light district -- not the most law-abiding folks -- resist being photographed). A girl named Shanti complains that her brother hits her, and then she sticks her hand in front of his lens to retaliate. We can see the roots of the children's sense of drama in nasty scenes of prostitutes hurtling obscenities at each other.
"Born Into Brothels'' showcases the children's photos of friends and kittens and workers bent over pots. Their work is surprisingly accomplished yet still youthfully spontaneous -- especially the photo with Shanti's hand in the frame.

Photographs taken by a boy named Avijit are heads above the rest. Flourishing in a miserable environment, his talent is the tree growing in Brooklyn or flower sprouting through a sidewalk crack. Already a wonderful painter, he's a natural photographer. During an outing to the beach, he follows a creative impulse to pour a bucket of water in front of his lens. The result is a photo of marvellous composition with a little something extra.

Avijit's family runs the room where the men get drunk before visiting the prostitutes, and the preadolescent must act as enforcer when the men don't pay. But he also has a proud grandmother who shows off his art prizes. Briski and Kauffman don't judge the children's families -- these are, after all, people caring enough to allow their kids to take classes when they could be earning money by scrubbing floors.
The directors' respect for the people of the brothels extends to the shots they choose. The squalor is always present but never magnified for effect. The most telling sequence unfolds without commentary. It follows the children's return from the open-air freedom of the beach to the night-time alleys of the red-light district. Avijit, a strapping kid who might be taken for older, shrugs off the clutch of a prostitute -- a move lent poignancy by how practiced it seems.

This interview took place in Los Angeles, on a promotional visit for the film:

Movie City News: At some point, while watching Born Into Brothels, I flashed on City of God. That was a drama, albeit one based on real people and events in Rio de Janeiro, while your students actually lived in some of Calcutta's most squalid districts, and produced real photographs.
Zana Briski: I haven't seen City of God, but a lot of my friends have suggested that I do. I've just been too busy.

MCN: The children in City of God were awash in images of violence and pop culture, with reggae music blaring over loudspeakers throughout the shantytown. Were the children of the brothel district similarly exposed to images of western life?
ZB: When I arrived there, there might have been one television set per brothel. By the time I left, there probably were four or five. They were small and black-and-white, for the most part, but there also were televisions in shop windows and other places.

MCN: Did these images, from Bollywood or MTV Asia even, foster in the kids any dreams of escape?
ZB: No. For them, there's no hope for the future … no options.
Ross Kauffman: It's true. There's no thought of leaving that place.

MCN: Nonetheless, the children we saw didn't seem to be openly depressed by that reality. They weren't moping around the brothels or constantly in tears. They often seemed happy.
ZB: For the most part, they were happy, although some kids we saw already had been beaten down and were depressed. Some of the girls already knew they'd end up like their mothers, and were quite withdrawn. But the kids in the movie were in good shape.

MCN: The father of one of the girls already had tried to kidnap and sell her, but her mother stepped in just in time. It's been pretty well documented that the trafficking of young girls, primarily in Southeast Asia, is such a lucrative business that parents often raise children with the intention of selling them into prostitution.
ZB: Actually, there is a lot of trafficking of young girls … especially from Bangladesh and parts of Nepal. Many are sold at the borders, which means the parents aren't necessarily aware of what kind of work their daughters will be doing, or that the man they married her off to is a pimp. Meanwhile, in the brothels, prostitution is a self-perpetuating business because everyone in the red-light district stays in the red-light district. There's no way out.

MCN: The girls know they're going become prostitutes?
ZB: Typically, the women -- many of whom are under extreme financial pressure -- don't actually put their daughters into the trade. They will, however, marry them off to a man from the area who will turn them out. It's more indirect.

MCN: What happens to the boys?
ZB: They become pimps, drug dealers or vendors in the area.

MCN: How much of this can be blamed on the caste system?
ZB: It goes beyond the caste system. Two of my students were Brahman, the highest class. All of the people in the red-light district are treated as if they're untouchable.

MCN: How big are these brothel districts?
ZB: Physically, this particular red-light district was small -- on a couple of square blocks -- but very dense. Something like 7,000 people lived there. There might be a half-dozen others in the city, as well.

MCN: Was your original intention to work with the children?
ZB: No, it was to do something on the women.

MCN: At some point, then, did you become fascinated with the children's reactions to the camera?
ZB: Yeah. The whole thing was like that.

MCN: How did the women react to you … were they forthcoming? Did they want their stories told, or did they consider you to be some freak from America?
ZB: A freak, probably. No, they didn't want their stories to be told, or be photographed. They were frightened that their photographs would appear in a movie, and they'd be recognized.

MCN: Was it dangerous?
ZB: Yes. There was a lot of crime.

MCN: Had you any experience with prostitution, or did you go into this thing blind?
ZB: Pretty much blind. But I knew it would be different than prostitution in America or Europe, where women get into it to feed a drug habit or because they were sexually abused. In India, it's because of poverty, and the societal stigma that prevents them from leaving.

MCN: Were you able to relate to those women simply on a woman-to-woman basis, or was there too big of a gap to overcome?
ZB: There were no similarities in our experiences. I knew that I was raised with privileges, including having an education and the choice to be whatever I wanted to be. That's why I wasn't judgmental about their choices.

MCN: Were they always sad … what were the women like in private?
ZB: They could be very funny. They also were feisty, volatile emotionally and strong.

MCN: How do the transactions take place? Was there a lineup inside the brothels, or did the women walk the streets?
ZB: In the quieter lanes of the red-light districts, people would usually just sit outside the brothels and wait for customers. Or, they would wait inside the brothels.The children saw everything, whether it was through a crack in the door, or they were in the next room. It wasn't unusual for a woman to keep a baby in the same room where she met customers. Every room in a building is occupied by a prostitute. Now, some of the women will go back and forth between the brothels and their villages, where they'd lie about what they were doing in the city. But, the children are raised in the brothels.

MCN: Your students seemed to betray a certain childhood innocence, however.
ZB: They were innocent only in that they weren't blameworthy. But, they're not naïve in any way. The girls may be in denial about what's going to happen to them, but that's not the same.

MCN: Was this an expensive film to make? You must have gone through a lot of film with the kids.
RK: We're big fans of Visa and MasterCard.
ZB: Developing the film and making prints was the most costly. Each of the kids got one or two rolls of film to shoot a week, so they learned to be conservative.

MCN: Were the cameras difficult for the students to use.
ZB: No, they were point and shoot … no need to focus or use light meters. And, they had large view finders.
MCN: They seemed to get it right away … their pictures were well composed and artistic.
RK: It was great watching the kids while they were shooting. I could see that they were composing through the camera. They were getting better and better, as we shot the documentary, yet their approach remained fresh.

MCN: Were you surprised by their choices?
ZB: I was constantly surprised. I didn't have any preconceived notions about what they would or should shoot. They were looking at everything. They weren't photographing what their mothers were doing, but pretty much everything else.
RK: Each of the kids developed their own separate style and favourite subject matter.

MCN: Not all of the kids stayed the course. Before the end credits rolled, you described briefly what's happened to them since you wrapped production.
ZB: Each of the situations was different. Today, three more of the kids are out of the brothels and their work continues. In some cases, the women needed the kids to help them in the brothels. In others, the mothers were too ashamed to let their kids go, because they didn't want it to appear as if they couldn't raise their own kids. Or, the mother would get pregnant and she needed help with the baby.

MCN: Are the problems faced by these women of concern to most Indian citizens? Do reports of the killing of unwanted girl babies disturb the populace?
ZB: No, they don't talk about it.

MCN: Do Indian filmmakers make documentaries about these issues.
ZB: No. It's a matter of no concern to most Indians.

MCN: How did it feel for you to leave the brothels every night and go to an apartment away from the district.
RK: Every night was difficult. Zana'd come home after work, and she'd be a mess. One of my jobs was to pick her up off the floor, put her in bed, and help her keep on going.

MCN: At one point in the movie, we learn that one of the girls couldn't attend the gallery opening because her mother couldn't afford the equivalent of quarter for a babysitter. Did you have to fight the temptation to help them financially, even in small way?
ZB: In that particular case, it was just an excuse for her not being allowed to leave the district. A little bit of money wasn't going to solve anyone's problems.

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