A picture is worth a thousand words.

A picture is worth a thousand words, unless holds even greater value for dispossessed kids with no birthright--no future

Directed by means of Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, Born into Brothels chronicles the spiraling journey of children living in Calcutta's red-light district. A tribute to the "resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art," the film portrays eight unforgettable children born into a lower caste, to drug-addicted and prostitute parents. Their exit from squalor materializes by the and of Briski, a New York-based photographer who bestows point-and-shoot cameras and teaches the children her craft. She indicates them how to dream outside the district, by the agency of snapping pictures at the zoo and the beach. During this proces Briski decides to take onward a mammoth task: getting the kids revealed of the brothels.

In India, female infanticide, dowry deaths and widowhood are rampant. The brothels here are an inescapable world for women who are forced to hawk their affections for the sake of their son and daughters. Many children receive irregular education in state-run institutions. however females inevitably end up 'on the line,' into prostitution. Briski's endeavour to place her scholars into boarding schools is unsettling. Navigating what's described as India's "labyrinthine bureaucracy," she must obtain requisite identity papers, as it was as birth certificates and ration cards. And before any drill opens its door, the adolescents must manifest they are HIV negative.

Despite Briski's best efforts, a of the children are still swallowed up through their surroundings, haunted by angry customers, alcohol and put drugs into abuse, thievery and murder. Fourteen-year-old Suchitra faces the ghost of being forced into the sex trade according to a family member. However, there's Avijit, a charismatic 12-year-old artist who is invited by way of Amsterdam's World Press Photo Foundation, to be a part of their children's jury in 2002 Avijit now lives in the what is yet to be Hope Home For Boys and attends undivided of the best schools in Calcutta. There's also 10-year-old Kochi, a diffident but determined girl, who is accepted into the Sabera Foundation to one's home For Girls and learns English and computer skills.

The children's photos are later exhibited in a novel York show, which raises enough wealth for their education. Briski, inspired by dint of her work in Calcutta's red-light district, goe onward to start up Kids With Cameras, which further subsidizes the lives of those shown in the film. In addition, the foundation dispatches other photographers to other parts of the world.

An Academy Award nominee for best documentary, the film has been a festival favourite, scoring the Sundance Film Festival's audience award and co-winning the International Documentary Association's feature prize along with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11

Together with Kauffman, Briski encapsulates the surprising beauty of single of India's most impoverished subsections. Vacant of sentimentality, Born into Brothels show ups a 'global underbelly' through the budding photographers, hold work. Here, the children's pictures are treated as "prisms into their souls" rather than anthropological novelties. They point out to how hope can be erect in the most unlikely place.

Born into Brothels was veiled at this year's Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. It is now playing in chosened theatres in Toronto and Vancouver. For more information, visit www.kids-with-cameras.org or www.thinkfilmcompany.com.

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