-> NY STATE (of Mind)
 BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE.
WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you.
VA INFORMATION and VETERANS' MORTGAGES
|
Toward the East G21 AFRICA G21 BOTTOM TEN PEOPLE OF 2004 JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. G21 MIDEAST GLOBAL*BEAT IRISH EYES MY GLASS HOUSE NEW YORK STATE (Of Mind) RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT VOX POPULI RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES. MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE ARCHIVES. LAST WEEK's EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE.
WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! OR TRY THIS GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE. |
To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese and Russian, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/nystate36.htm") and enter it in the box after you click through.
NEW YORK, NY, USA - With the tsunami catastrophe fresh in mind, a documentary like "Born into Brothels" offers a ray of hope for a region often fraught with tragic stories. Though its directors, Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, backed into creating this documentary -- about children from Calcutta's brothels getting handed cameras and discovering a new life through making art -- the experience transformed their lives. Not only have they profoundly affected these kids' lives; Briski now has a foundation that expects to repeat this experience for other kids and Kauffman has made the feature that is now garnering much praise and talk of numerous award nominations, including a possible Oscar nod.
G21: What did you do to prepare for this and what happened as a consequence?
ZANA BRISKI: I did no preparation at all for this project -- none at all. This whole project was really me responding to what was happening around me. I'm a photographer. I was invited to Calcutta and had photographs in a show, so I was in India and somebody invited me to the red light district. That's how the project started. I spent a lot of time trying to get access to the brothels and photographed the women over a period of years, then met the children. I had not planned to teach them photography, didn't do research about it, but was just responding to the children wanting to learn. Then when I really started teaching the kids and saw their contact sheets, I wanted to document what was going on because it was an incr edible thing that was happening. At that point I asked Ross to come and make a film with me. So, none of this was pre-meditated.
G21: When did you realize there was a film to be made?
Zana: Even then I wasn't thinking about making a film, I was really thinking about documenting what was going on. I wasn't thinking about an end product. I had no idea about film festivals or Sundance or Oscars or any of that. There was something important happening and I needed to record it. It wasn't like, "Oh, I'm going to be a filmmaker now."
Ross Kauffman: When she asked me to come and make the film with her, I knew what it [what] would take to make a film. At first, we talked about making a 10- or 15-minute film and then it quickly became apparent that it would probably be a bit longer than and I basically told her I didn't want to do it because I was editing and didn't want to get into that whole arena of being a struggling filmmaker. But she went and bought two digital video cameras. She took one and gave the other to me. Then she went off to Calcutta and shot some video and sent some back to me for my critique; she knew that as soon as I saw this footage, I'd want to go, and that's what happened.
Zana: I didn't really have the idea. I was just responding to the kids who were grabbing my camera. I was showing them how to use my camera -- so then I thought: "Okay, I'll buy them their own cameras."
Through that process, and in seeing the results of the film, I realized how empowering photography is -- and how tremendously effective the camera is as a tool. It's a very simple thing to do, but it gives the kids so much confidence.
Then, when they produce these beautiful photographs, it educates other people about their circumstances, and they can raise money for their education. So it's a perfect tool.
G21: Once you saw the possibilities of the moving image, how did you negotiate whose input was used and when?
Ross: We actually never discussed it. We both shot, directed, and produced.
Zana: Naturally, we have different talents.
Ross: Zana shoots more from a still background. Shooting beautiful shots, really gorgeous shots.
Zana: I'm very visual, and captivated by beauty. Ross would focus more on the story and shooting me, because I couldn't shoot myself.
Ross: Because I came from an editing background, I definitely wanted to make sure that there was some story to hang my hat on in the editing room.
G21: Once you sat down and started to edit, did you find it hard or easy with the amount of material? I assume you had millions of hours of material.
Ross: We had about 170 hours of material; that was not too bad, especially nowadays.
G21: In the editing process, were there things you discovered; was it a matter of pruning away or discovering stuff?
Ross: Our editing was just discovering the footage and going in there and seeing with no preconceived notion. Just to see and react to the material. We screened all 170 hours with our editor and she worked with me for seven months with what I had edited for the last 4 1/2 months. We all reacted to the same material that was coming at us, and went with those feelings and reactions. Then we just pruned away and sculpted a rough cut while working our way towards the finished product.
G21: How did you meet?
Ross: Through a mutual friend, and we just started going out immediately for six years. We sort of broke up midway through this film.
G21: Well, obviously you found a way to stay together as friends.
Ross: Yes, we're doing a decent job.
G21: So what are the consequences of making this film? Most doc-makers have a much harder time detaching themselves from a subject than when you make a fiction film.
Zana: I never intended to be detached from the subjects at all. I wanted to share the lives of the kids, their joy and talent and [show what happened with them]. As a result, we premiered at Sundance, we've been to about 30 film festivals traveling with an exhibition of the children?s photography, and we've sold about $100,000 worth of prints this year -- 100% goes to the kids' education, which is tremendously empowering for them.
G21: How old are they now?
Zana: Between 12 and 15.
G21: You founded your organization Kids with Cameras as a result of the film?
Zana: The mission of the organization is to empower marginalized children through photography, through the art of photography. So we've taken this idea and started doing supporting photographers in other countries. We started a project with Israelis kids and Palestinian kids this year; and we're starting one with Haitian girls who are domestic servants in Haiti next month. Then next year, we're starting one in Cairo with kids that live in the garbage dumps. And we'll leave a legacy project in each of these communities depending on what's appropriate. That might be to support the children with scholarships, it might mean supporting a community center or even building a school. In Calcutta, we're actually building a school of leadership in the arts, specifically for children of prostitutes and that will open in 2006.
G21: Did you feel a connection to the Brazilian feature "City of God," in which a young boy is saved from gang life by discovering photography?
Zana: I've never seen it.
G21: Get the DVD. It shows how photography empowered this kid to get beyond his world. The idea seems to be floating in the air, which is a good thing. How has this film affected their awareness of themselves now that they are seeing the consequences of their photographs?
Zana: They are so much more confident, articulate, committed to themselves and their own lives are able to stand on their own two feet, and stand up to the people who don't want them to change. That's going to be the purpose of the school we are building. It will focus on empowerment and leadership. These kids are completely marginalized. Indian society does not want to empower them, they just want to ignore them, and so it's a pretty radical thing to do.
G21: What made you decide on India?
Zana: I didn't decide on India [laughs], I just followed my intuition and everything was saying, go to India. So, I quit my job, and the next day I was on an airplane to India.
G21: What was your job at the time?
Zana: I was a staff photographer for the Baltimore Sun for a very short period of time because I can't hold down a job.
G21: Has the process of making this film somehow changed you as a still photographer?
Zana: Certainly. I haven't taken pictures in three years and I'm dying to get back to my own photography but I don't think that it will affect it.
G21: Have you always been a documentary oriented photographer?
Zana: I fall between two worlds. It's strictly documentary, in that I don't touch things, I don't affect them. But it's not documentary because it's much more artistic than most documentary. I shoot black and white so I'm in between. I love photography, the art of photography. I love working in the dark room and printing, if I can remember how.
Ross: We digitally print the kids' work.
Zana: That's because it's beautiful. We do these beautiful prints on Somerset paper, watercolor paper. I'm not against digital photography, but for my own work, I love to make prints.
G21: There's a book on the way?
Zana: There's a book of the children's work that's officially b eing released in January '05. You can order it on the website and at film festivals. Then I'm self-publishing a book of my work which will be out early next year [En Shala]. If I can raise the $50,000 to do the printing!
G21: What was the most difficult thing in making this film?
Ross: Funding. There's Visa, Mastercard, and Discover, that's the first thing. And we also were able to get some grants from Sundance Institute, The Jerome Foundation, New York State Council of The Arts and that took us part of the way through the editing, but we're still looking for money to get out of the hole.
THE PREVIOUS NEW YORK STATE | THE CONCURRENT PREVIOUS NEW YORK STATE | THE NEXT NEW YORK STATE |
© 2005, GENERATOR 21.
E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.
writelikegod.com