So, about Born Into Brothels... The woman who narrates and pieces together this documentary is a photographer named Zana Briski. She lives on assignment in the Red Light District of Sonagachi in Calcutta, India. She teaches children of prostitutes about photography by giving them a camera, giving them a few lessons about taking pictures, then bringing them to places (beach, zoo, art gallery) where they can take photos. This is the main story. The underlying story is that the children's mothers are prostitutes and that the daughters of these prostitutes will likely soon become prostitutes themselves. By the end of the documentary the main story becomes the underlying and vice versa.
None of the children except one boy has had any formal education. The one boy who is in school, Avijit, speaks English and had aspired to be a doctor, but decides that he has no future. It is hardest to see him go downhill. His father was once well respected, now his father smokes hash all day, every day, and his mother has moved away to be a prostitute somewhere more lucrative. Sadly, her new pimp sets her on fire in her kitchen and she dies. There is no time for her son to mourn her, he must continue on and take his exams.
You ask me to post, so I'm going to tell you how it ends. Zana gets schooling for almost all the children, at a couple different boarding schools. She endures the process of obtaining all the proper papers for each child and all HIV tests for each child (you're not allowed to be in the boarding schools if you test positive). All the children's tests come back negative. The photographer brings all the children to their boarding schools. The families agree on film not to take the children out of these boarding schools. Off camera, all but two of the children (Avijit and Kochi, a girl) are pulled out or choose to leave school to continue supporting their impoverished families. One child who wasn't permitted to go to school in the first place runs away and enters a boarding school. So, there are three happy endings, and several unhappy endings. Any girl who left school is, right now, either dead or a prostitute - being used for sex, addicted to drugs, being treated inhumanely, making a living on her back, and not yet even a teenager.
A more comprehensive review is available at IMDb. I am happy for the ones who made it out, I am sad and frustrated for the ones who returned home.
4 comments:
sounds a bit depressing..... but all-in-all, three sucesses is statistically quite good (which is, of course, even more depressing).
thanks for obliging with a summary :)
Mahanadhi (Tamil) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140348/
this is one movie which shows how (as a subplot) a 13-year old girl is kidnapped and sent to Calcutta by her father's business partner and how the father tries to bring her back. Very depressing.
LiT
LiT, I can't find this film at Amazon or Netflix. It sounds fascinating, I'd really like to see it, but I can't find a copy to buy or rent. Argh!
OMG! I just went to my blog to read my comments and I come to yours and check your blog and lo and behold, see that you watched Born into Brothels. I SWEAR!!!! I just finished watching it two mintues ago! It was amazing. I felt so sad for the kids that didn't stay at the school, especially that Suchitra who's aunt wouldn't let her leave.
How funny is that that we watched the same movie, great minds think alike I'm thinking!
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