Flutterby™! : Born Into Brothels

Last night Charlene and I went over to The Rafael to see Born Into Brothels. Zana Briski is a photographer who went to Calcutta's red light district to photograph what was there, and in the process of ingratiating herself into the area so that she was accepted, ended up teaching a buch of slum kids photography. The film chronicles her efforts to get several of them into boarding schools, take them out of the slums and educate them so that they can break the cycle.

During the film I wasn't all that impressed with the film. The beginning was slow, even for a documentary, but the conversation we had afterwards made the film worthwhile, and I think I can recommend it based on that.

It's probably beyond the scope of the film, and might even be counter to the spirit in which the documentary was made, but I would have liked to see a lot more editorializing in the film about the policies and circumstances that lead to slums like that. For instance: One of the struggles was finding boarding schools that would accept children whose parents had been convicted of crimes. Cited were prostitution and selling liquor without a license. If ever there were an argument for decriminalizing those two particular activities...

I also wonder why every boarding school we're shown is run by westerners. These kids attend schools in their own neighborhoods, and part of the draw of the boarding school is to get them out of the neighborhoods, but I wonder why the Indian educational system is failing them. I believe there are a lot of reasons to re-examine Ghandi's legacy, perhaps this is another one?

I'm also now far less sympathetic to those who decry child labor and sweatshops. Every one of those kids would have been better off working a 12 hour shift in a factory and sleeping in a company dorm.

Anyway, despite my somewhat negative first impression I've got to recommend this one.