Ray Pride

Making a picture is a perilous feat.

Pointing a camera: how simple is that? Not simple at all, as the ceaseless daily weft of representation we're surrounded by seeks to hide. There are agendas that some image-makers seem not to even realize they're fulfilling, and as awards season wends its way into spring, there are subjects that seduce filmmakers in seemingly cynical ways: mothers, children, suffering caused by exotic forms of disadvantage.

By the first whiff of a description of its content, the unflinching, enthralling "Born into Brothels," a documentary by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, seems custom-built for the getting of gongs, winning an Audience Award at Sundance 2004, as well as more than twenty other major plaudits to date, including a Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and a freshly minted Oscar nomination.

But "Born into Brothels" is both tough and magical, a heartwarming, heartbreaking movie about kids who live in squalor but dream like kids, are hopeful like kids, but oppressed like grownups. Born to mothers in the red-light district of Calcutta, the girls are expected to follow in the trade once they reach puberty.

Briski, a British photojournalist, took off for Calcutta in 1998, hoping to document the lives of the estimated 7,000 women who are sex workers in the red-light district there. Her life changed in unexpected ways. Documentary, at its best, is different from writing fiction in a room alone, a process of discovery rather than an illumination of what the filmmaker already knows. Different phrases are used: "documentary kismet" is one I've heard applied to the catnip moments that demonstrate to the eye behind the camera that, yes, my instincts are right, there's something here. Albert Maysles calls it "Providence." And famed French critic and theorist Andre Bazin sometimes seemed to think photography was truth itself.

"I had no intention of photographing prostitutes until a friend took me to Calcutta's red-light district," Briski says. "From the moment I stepped foot inside that maze of alleyways, I knew that this was the reason I had come to India." As might be expected, there were barriers, objections. But "the children accepted me immediately. They were mesmerized by me and my camera." She wanted to see the world through their eyes, deciding to teach them photography, bringing ten point-and-shoot cameras on her next trip to India.

Two years into her travels, she asked Kauffman to collaborate. Kauffman had spent most of the 1990s as a documentary film editor, cutting projects like HBO Undercover's "Hookers at the Point." He was anxious to make a transition to shooting from cutting. He admits he was intrigued by the stories she told, but passed on the chance, "feeling that I didn't want to be a poor, struggling filmmaker for the next three to five years."

Briski sent him four videotapes from Calcutta, asking for his criticism, as she had never shot video before. One simple sentence says it: "Within ten minutes of viewing the first tape, I knew I was going to Calcutta," Kauffman says.

"Even when I had access," Briski says, "living in the brothel and knowing the people, there were always times when I was aware that I couldn't shoot. There were plenty of times when there were fights, or a suicide, or a murder, and you know there's a person who doesn't want their photo taken." Or as Kauffman puts it, "You can't put your finger on the exact reason, but you put the camera down."

Kauffman also encouraged Briski to appear on camera, capturing her awe as well as directly confronting the potentially conflicted reasons they had for being there. "The joy on the kids' faces was just so amazing, and it's just so different than you'd expect," he says. "During my second trip, I found the story became not just about the kids, it was about Zana trying to get the kids out of the brothels." Briski was working eighteen-hour days to teach the kids, working to get them passports and birth certificates and get them into schools: not a prescription for being an eager interview subject.

Still, it's the work of the eight children, ranging from 10 to 14 when the footage was shot, more than their faces, more than Briski's hope, more than their emotional resilience that makes "Born Into Brothels" an emotional and not estheticizing experience: the uplift, the outrages are earned, unforced, forced, inherent to the story being told. When one of the boys spits, ''I take pictures to show how people in this city live, I want to put across the behavior of men," the fire of lived passion, the fire of art, burn, despite the heartbreak, violence and obscenity of some of what we are shown.

A couple days before the end of Sundance 2005, I ran into a jet-lagged Kauffman, after the movie was nominated for an Oscar. He'd just returned from Calcutta, where he showed the film to his now-older subjects. Watching the nomination announcements with them, he tried to offer them context for what that worldwide notice might mean to their storytelling ambitions as well. He said he didn't think they really understood, but they were excited; they were happy. Look at the photos and the faces: you'll understand.

The photographers' work can be seen at www.kids-with-cameras.org, a foundation extending Briski's original project. Their goal in expanding to an international reach? "By teaching the art and skills of photography, Kids with Cameras empowers children growing up in difficult circumstances and allows them to appreciate the beauty and dignity of their own expression."

"Born into Brothels" opens Friday at Landmark Century.

(2005-02-08)

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