Strong and Moving!

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There's a reason I read a handful of positive and negative reviews for each film I watch before I post my own. This one draws severe criticism from more than a handful of reviewers who totally castigate the filmmakers and virtually everything about it - the editing, the choice of location, even the motives of the principals. Many of them, and not surprisingly in this age of 'white guilt', attempt to shame the principals for self aggrandizement while citing their vaunted position as members of an elite minority class.By merely watching this documentary, none of those thoughts ever entered my head. Can it be such a bad thing that Zana Briski took a handful of underprivileged kids under her wing and attempted to show them there was an outlet for their creativity, and perhaps a way out of their situation? Most of these children felt resigned to taking up the same life as their parents, while realizing that it was an immeasurably bad one. When 'Zana Auntie' asked the young girl Suchitra "Do you see any solution to all this?", the answer was a resounding "No". One of the boys in the film gave a starker reply later on - "There is nothing called 'hope' in my future".With all that, it was so disheartening to learn at the end of the film that most of the kids featured returned in some measure to their prior life. Manik's father - didn't allow him to go to school. Puja's mother - withdrew her from the Sabena School. Shanti left on her own. Gour went back to live at home and wanted to attend the University. Tapasi ran away from home to attend a girl's school. Suchitra's aunt wouldn't let her leave the brothel. Only Kochi remained at Sabena.All you critics, ask yourself - "Where are these kids now?"

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved a little by the kids and their circumstances in this story. Born into Brothels serves as sort of a basic litmus test for empathy: if you can't say to yourself 'that could've been me, in some other time or place or by some other stroke of chance or luck or what have you', then you shouldn't go near these movies (or perhaps movies in general). Its heart is squarely in the right place as one-time director Zana Briski (she didn't do anything before or since really, as filmmaking isn't exactly her forte so much as photography) goes into a part of Calcutta where brothels run rampant and there's no police - kids work from the age of whenever the parent (if there even is one) decides so, and school is usually a luxury or a privilege. If there's anything of an arc to the film it's following who may get into one school or another, or if one may get into a photo competition in Amsterdam.I may have skipped over the obvious of the premise - Calcutta kids get cameras and take pictures of their surroundings. Simple enough, and to be sure many of them take wonderful photographs that carry actual artistry and (as noted in the film) attention to composition. I was reminded following these kids a little of the film Hoop Dreams, which also is about kids growing up in poor neighborhoods and who may get the chance to move on with their lives by a combination of luck and hard work and tenacity (or if life doesn't get in the way, which it invariably does).Though it may have been impractical, I wished there was more to this movie than there is (or maybe, in some years time and it hasn't happened yet, the approach of the "Up" series where we see the kids 7/8 years later and so on). The directors take so much time to set up the kids, but it's not like they are very varied; where 'Dreams' had two young people, this has seemingly about 10 or maybe a dozen (I lost count to be honest). They're charming and easy enough to watch - my first thought once the documentary ended is that this is the lightest/fluffiest film about poverty-stricken youth I can remember seeing - but they're not distinctive enough to carry a movie that is so short. With more development or time to see their life stories, there might be something more as far as *narrative* goes.There are conflicts and tragedies, to be sure (one kid's mother is killed by her pimp, and it seems to be just another day in the red light district, again no justice either), and when the kids are seen in the midst of the aggressively-mouthed adults around them there's tension (there's a reason this is Rated-R so be warned if you decide to show this to your kids). But at the end of the day it really is more important as a social document than as a piece of cinema that you MUST see. It may help change how you see certain things with Calcutta - maybe some will come with the impression of the place as being only one way with one group of people, and here it's all about what options people have really, which is a good distinction the movie makes - and there's some nice/pretty photos to look at. Good but not great.

If you are looking for a 'feel good' movie or one that gives you a strong feeling of hope, then you probably should not watch "Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids". It's a generally depressing film and offers a few tiny rays of hope by the end of the film...but only a few.Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman traveled to India and befriended a group of children and their families living in the brothels of Calcutta, India. How exactly they arranged all this is not mentioned in the film--it just begins with Zana spending time with a group of eight of these kids. She has taught them to use cameras and they are chronicling their lives in a crappy neighborhood--living amongst poverty and depravity. The filmmakers are not social workers--just filmmakers and photographers. Through the course of the film, Zana spends much of her time not just instructing the kids on photography and taking them on outings. She also tries to get the kids in boarding schools as well as one special kid a chance to go to an international photography conference in the Netherlands. But, despite her best efforts, the kids and their families have this strong pull--a pull to keep them in the gutters and on track to repeat the family pattern of prostitution, drug abuse and early death.Overall, an oddly compelling and ultimately depressing documentary. However, it is not without merit and I can see how it won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. It is well constructed and fascinating...and quite sad.

Never has there been a more gross misuse of wording than in the title of this film. This is little more than a showcase of Briski's "forward thinking" self righteous presence and overrated photography. This woman taught a group of children, living in squalor and facing starvation how to use a camera. Yes, a C A M E R A! As if the ability to shoot nice little pictures was going to help them rise above their situation and do better for themselves. Tell me Zana, if one of said children decided to take up such a lovely hobby...how would they get their pictures developed? How would they afford the film? The brothel/prostitution aspect is brought up very little. The very word "Brothel" was probably mentioned all of three times. The film doesn't delve into how the mothers ended up there, assault/battery, child prostitution or anything of substance.This is about the nice white lady who rolled out of bed one day and decided to showcase her benevolent spirit. But what she gave them was nothing. A useless hobby that was forgotten by the time she boarded her plane back to New York. While she's sipping cocktails somewhere in Midtown Manhattan congratulating herself on her selfless deeds and how she's helped those poor little brown children, a 10yr old girl is probably having her virginity auctioned off to the highest bidder...a 50 yr old man.