Great movie that everyone should see

Tonight Karl and I watched the last episode of "Ghost Hunters" saved on our TiVo and then hit a rut....what to watch on a lazy Saturday night??? We just watched our last Netflix movie last night ("Rachel Getting Married"...pretty good), so that was not an option. Finally we realized we had a list of free movies available through our Comcast "On Demand" service. We started off watching soem dud called "Blood Games" and after about one minute of that we turned it off. It was a bunch of scantily clad women playing baseball while being inappropriately touched by the opposing team. NOT my idea of a good movie.

SO.....we decided to watch the documentary "Born Into Brothels", which won an Oscar for Best Documentary a few years ago. I really wasn't in the mood for a heavy, emotional movie, but I ended up getting really into it once we started watching it. Once again, I'm going to leave the explaining to the experts. Here is the official description of the movie from its website:

"A tribute to the resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art, Born into Brothels is a portrait of several unforgettable children who live in the red light district of Calcutta, where their mothers work as prostitutes. Zana Briski, a New York-based photographer, gives each of the children a camera and teaches them to look at the world with new eyes."

I found this movie to be extremely interesting, given that one of my most recent posts was about narcissistic American children who think the world revolves around them and are brought up to think they are entitled to absolutely anything and everything they want. The real-life kids chronicled in this movie were the exact opposite of the type of American kids I just described. They have literally been born into brothels, have no hope, no expectations for anything in life, and want to get an education more than anything else. How many children in the U.S. would say that education was the most important thing to them? One of the little boys in the movie, 11-year-old Avijit, was quoted as saying, "There is nothing called hope in my future."

While watching it, I found myself hoping for a happy ending, but this was a documentary - things don't always turn out to be rainbows and butterflies in real life. Watch it for yourself to see what happens to each of the children. I will give you a quick spoiler and say that at least some of the kids made it out of the brothels as a result of the efforts of Zana Briski, the founder of the Kids With Cameras organization.

Here are some examples of the children's photography, which I obtained from the official website for the movie. You can purchase prints of these photos from that website and the profits go to the Kids With Cameras nonprofit organization. I thought the quality of their photography was really impressive considering that they had never used, let alone seen, a camera in their lives until this point. Also, the cameras they used were simple point-and-click 35MM film cameras that you could probably buy for about $20 at a drugstore. Keep in mind, these were all taken by kids around age 11! Wow!










Bottom line: WATCH THE MOVIE!!! We all need a glimpse of other cultures in order to truly appreciate all that we have and to possibly reach out and help those in need, such as the kids in this film.