’’Born Into Brothels’’ captures the lives of Red-Light-Area Kolkata children. Zana(the director) lives in these brothels for several months, and gets deeply involved in the lives of these children. These children quite obviously are fantasised by this little, cute thing in her hand - the camera. So, she takes photographic lessons everyday, gives them cameras for field exercises, takes them to zoos, schools - the real world, exhibits their photographs in Manhattan, video-conferences the photo-exhibition live from Manhattan, New York to RedLight, Kolkata through her laptop, calls on NY photographers of repute to India to watch these children more closely, organizes another photo-exhibition in Kolkata city (and the children do their first television interviews, get their photos on the front-page of the daily newspapers), posts their hand-clicked photos in International Photo competition, takes one of them to represent India in Amsterdam Photo competition, runs around the Indian red-tape mechanisms to get these children admitted into schools, convinces their elders that education to them is after all not a bad thing. All this, with least invasion of her commentary. She is there, but not there. Its just about the incredibly unfortunate children, their slightly-less-unfortunate parents, and the camera.
The way the children: hold their cameras, interact with it, face the ’stigma’ of holding a camera, forget taking night-photographs with flashes, anxiously await the development of the reel, click around with the camera for no particular reason than fun, soon realizing that there is a greater idea of taking photographs - is just so sweet fun. The whole idea of photography as a wonderful metaphor to see a different world - a world they were denied, is deeply touching.
This is one of the best documentaries I have seen, and probably the best movie I have seen thats backed by such strong ethnography. Ross(the cameraman and second-director) shoots these clips with hidden handycams, ordinary handycams, and gets the shots incredibly right. Accompanied by it, is some stirring music(flutes and tabla, mostly), which quite naturally swings the lighter moods to the what-the-hells, and back forth. It definitely deserves its Oscar for Best Documentary.
It was an amazing feeling seeing it among a hall packed with white audience, with no Indians in sight. It was heartening to see the real India again, getting so many laughs and a final ecstatic ovation. After the show, I tried rushing out of the hall to avoid being greeted with sympathetic smiles. Though I get a few of them, I was happy to realize that emotions are so universal in nature.
As I sit here and type these words in the frenzy of a country where there is more toilet-paper than ordinary paper, more electronics than uses, more soda than water, more cars than humans, I see the gleaming faces of those 9 children with cameras, wanting to break free. I see them dancing to ’’Mohabbatein’’ songs, I see them calling me back to India, I hear Rahman’s haunting shehnai from Swades. I feel deeply insecure as a designer, writer or whatever, living and designing in a world of surplus. All I can say is - Oh, well!
~Vamsi Deepak Gadey, from USA.