Born into Brothels is a 2004 Indian-American documentary film, written and directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman about the children of prostitutes in Sonagachi, Calcutta's red light district. This documentary, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2004.It is about the inspiring non-profit foundation for Kids with Cameras, it teaches photography skills to children in marginalized communities. In 1998, New York-based photographer Zana Briski started photographing prostitutes in the red-light district of Calcutta. The Calcutta brothels is a very poor place and in comparison to the United States. It looks like they are living 50 years behind. The cars and the televisions are very old. People look sad and very depressed. A lot of people are getting very little money through prostitution, selling drugs and liquor. Everything is illegal.
Briski is describing Calcutta brothels community as a society of its own, she cannot take photographs in the Red Light District because everyone is terrified of the camera because of the freight of being found out. Everything is illegal. Briski becomes a friend to the children of these prostitutes. She is offering to teach the children photography that is allowing her also to take pictures of their mothers. She eventually developed a relationship with their …show more content…
Cultural differences are noticed comparing with my childhood life, it was a right and mandatory that children to go to school. In the brothels, this is not the case as children, we did not have to do such hard labor as shown in the documentary. We enjoyed life as kids with no responsibilities or worries of being treated as sex slaves as the children in the Calcutta brothels. A community filled with brothels education is not a priority the parents for some of the children are waiting for them to be mature enough to join prostitution. This is probably very usual or typical to their culture, but is regarded as a serious insult in this