Born Into Brothels...

Today I watched a documentary called Born Into Brothels. Photographer Zana Briski traveled to Calcutta and taught the children of prostitutes how to use cameras and take pictures. This documentary shows their lives, and the pictures they take. This is a really good documentary and depicts life in Calcutta, and shows these children's daily lives of hard working, and an eventual future of prostitution for the girls if they don't get an education. It's so nice to see the children getting along and playing together innocently, when unfortuanetly, later in life the men will come to treat the women as less than their equals. There is a part in the documentary where the children go to the local zoo and one boy named Goru speaks of the treatment of the animals, and how they are caged and only fed very little once a day. He also says people feed the elephants plastic bags because they are hungry and do not know it's not food, but this is very unhealthy for them. The children actually come to take some pretty exquisite photographs. I was taken back by how the children were being spoken to by adults. One part of the documentary shows a girl getting water from a well, and an adult who is not her relative calls her some very dirty names, and says some very mean and nasty things to her. Throughout the documentary Zana Briski loses some of the children to whom she's teaching photography, to prostitution. Zana tries to find schools for these children, but many of the schools don't want to take in the children of prostitutes, and sadly it is very hard for the children to not fall into prostitution when their parents, grandparents, and so on have all been prostitutes. These children are amazing, and so creative and full of expression, it's sad t see where they end up in life. One child says something to the effect of "You must just accept that life is sad and full of pain...that's all."