Born into Brothels

Thanks to Sandra Thomas and the crew at Images Cinema for bringing to Williamstown this year’s Oscar winner for best documentary, just another instance of the well-judged programming they do year round. If you read about some offbeat new film that’s getting a lot of review attention, chances are amazingly good that it will be coming to Images, here in our remote NW corner of Massachusetts. This visually-sophisticated and socially-conscious film takes us far afield, to the red light district of Calcutta, where we become friends with a mixed group of children of prostitutes, with whom filmmaker Zana Briski establishes a connection through the medium of photography, giving them cameras to document the teeming streets and cramped backstairs of their milieu. The kids are all spirited creatures not yet crushed by their environment. Auntie Zana also connects them to the outside world, through field trips and then public exhibitions of their photographs, designed to raise funds for them to attend boarding school and rise above “the line.” Though Briski herself becomes a focus of the film (co-made with Ross Kauffman), it doesn’t become self-serving, but rather just shows what a terrific effort it takes to help just one or two out of a select group manage to escape a dismal homelife. Any uplift the film has comes not from self-congratulatory rescue, but from the liveliness and engagement of the children themselves, which is of course the ultimate source of sadness as well. Not just random victims, these kids become dancing points of light in grave danger of being snuffed out. (2004, Images, n.) *7+* (MC-78, RT-96.)