[Reader-list] Zana's Shutters

[Adreesh Katyal]

Zana's Shutters
Briski's Born Into Brothels begins as a story of Sonagachi's children
but ends with her as its sole heroine

By Seema Sirohi
[ Outlook | 14 March 2005 ]
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050314&fname=Film+%28F%29&sid=1


Anointed by an Oscar and feted on the celebrity circuit, Zana Briski
and Ross Kauffman are flying well above the mean streets of Sonagachi,
Calcutta's red-light district, where their award-winning documentary
Born Into Brothels is set. Briski, in a backless gown, blew a kiss
from the Oscar stage across the oceans to the "kids" she said were
watching in Calcutta. The big smile heralded the big times for the
photographer and her co-director, now armed with the coveted statuette
for their entire filmmaking life, thanks to the children and women of
the city of joy.

Born Into Brothels is being hailed in the West as the ultimate
uplifting film, a "humanitarian" effort by Briski who dared to live
amid the squalor. Western critics and audiences are taken up by the
British-born photographer's knight-in-shining-armour efforts. Some of
the children too are happy she got the award. The film is about the
"missionary zeal" with which she tried to save seven kids from their
environment in Sonagachi. And from Calcutta, a city ever fascinating
to "white" saviours, from Mother Teresa to Dominique Lapierre and now
Briski.

The film centres around Briski's efforts to improve the lives of some
children she befriended in 1997 while trying to document the lives of
sex workers in Calcutta. Unable to fulfil her original goal, she
shifted her focus to the kids, giving them cameras and basic lessons
in photography. The children take telling shots of their surroundings
which Briski later used for exhibitions and a Sotheby's auction in
2001 to raise money. Amnesty International used a photo for its 2003
calendar. Flush with grants, she created 'Kids With Cameras', a
charitable organisation to help the children.

But Born Into Brothels won't be shown in India. At a recent screening
in Washington, Kauffman said the sex workers whose children feature in
the film don't want it to be shown in India. The filmmakers want to
protect their identities. Really? After an Oscar and a relentless run
of the festival circuit, the issue of maintaining anonymity seems
far-fetched.

The decision, whatever its merit, has already led to serious
questioning of the filmmakers' intent. Is it because Indian audiences
and reviewers might take issue with Briski's "intervention" in the
lives of some of the most unfortunate? Members of the Durbar Women's
Coordination Committee, an organisation of Sonagachi's sex workers,
are unhappy about Briski's high-handed decision. Sandhya Dutta, who
helped Briski and lives in Sonagachi, told a Calcutta newspaper she
felt "used" twice over because people in other countries were watching
a film about their lives while she couldn't.

Some critics are also asking whether the duo obtained legal permission
from the sex workers whose innermost lives and conflicts they exposed,
sometimes through the kids. One such child, Puja, enrolled in Briski's
photography class, clicks people who clearly don't want to be
photographed. The photos appear in the film, raising troubling
questions about consent. If Sonagachi residents do not want to be
immortalised on film by one of their own, they surely wouldn't want to
be exposed to a worldwide bazaar of gawkers.

The children in the film come across as children anywhere—likeable and
friendly. They seem to have implicit faith in 'Zana Aunty' who
shepherds them around, even taking one specially talented boy to
Amsterdam for a photo contest after struggling to get him a passport.
The film crosses the line from documentation to activism but no one
knows whether the interventions helped or hampered the subjects.

In the end, the film seems more about Briski's journey and less about
the hard reality of prostitution and the effects of her interference
in young lives. It tugs at the heart but leaves the head relatively
untouched.Intentionally or not, Briski is the noble soul in the film,
faced with the mountain of Indian bureaucracy, teaching the children
photography, trying to move them to good schools, getting them tested
for aids and taking them to the zoo. The film's self-congratulatory
tone thickens as it progresses through 'Zana Aunty's' triumphs and
travails, making us wonder who the real subject is.

The film also gives the impression that besides Briski, no one wants
or is trying to improve the squalid scenario, that Indians are unaware
and blind to the cancer within. The film's paternalistic tone has
evoked a response here. Most Western reviewers have seen Briski's
effort in the light she cast for them. The New York Times called the
film "moving, charming and sad, a tribute to Ms Briski's
indomitability and to the irrepressible creative spirits of the
children themselves".

But Partha Banerjee, a New Jersey-based immigration advocate who
interpreted hundreds of hours of tape for Briski from Bengali to
English during the filming, was disturbed enough by the end-product to
write to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last month
raising questions about the film, including the unauthorised use of
music from Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. Having grown up in Calcutta,
Banerjee is passionate about his city and incensed that the tireless
work of other concerned citizens gets not even a fleeting mention. He
says it is their work and organising prowess that keeps Sonagachi
relatively free of hiv infections compared to other red-light areas in
India.

Banerjee also says the children's lives are "worse" rather than
better, thanks to Briski's intervention. "I visited these children a
number of times over the last couple of years and found that almost
all the children are now living a worse life than they were before Ms
Briski began working with them," he wrote to the Academy. "The
children's despair has exacerbated because they'd hoped that with
active involvement in Ms Briski's camera project, there would be an
opportunity for them to live a better life." Their parents believed
their children would share some of the glory the filmmakers are now
basking in, he said.

Banerjee told Outlook he doesn't begrudge Briski her fame, but he
finds her treatment "sensational" as it is unbalanced and ultimately
unfair. During the filming, Briski's relations with local activists
worsened over many of her decisions. But do Briski and Kauffman have
time to look back and analyse this? Not really.