Born into Brothels

Following my friend Teri's strong recommendation a while back, I added this Oscar-winning documentary to my Netflix queue. Finally last weekend I watched it. Incredible. As a photographer, Zana Briski has been working with the women of the brothels in Calcutta for a number of years. She became interested in the children of the prostitutes and has been teaching them photography. This documentary follows one group of children as we see inside their lives through interviews with them and the photographs they take. The poverty, squalor and violence (emotional, verbal, physical) they live with is just heartbreaking. The girls face a future of "joining the line" like their mothers and the boys have the prospect of drugs and selling illegal alcohol in theirs. Throughout the documentary we see Zana Briski attempting to help the children gain admittance to boarding schools, as education is the only chance for these children to get out of the brothels. Unfortunately, the task is a daunting one as boarding schools don't generally allow children of criminals into their schools. One of the little boys, Avijit, who is both a talented artist and photographer, while looking at a photo taken by a child from another part of the world, comments, "This is a good picture...we get a good sense of how these people live. And though there is sadness in it...and though it is hard to face, we must look at it because...It is truth." This applies equally to watching Born into Brothels.