Children focus on the art of survival

“Born Into Brothels” shatters expectations and confounds preconceptions. A documentary that changed the lives both of subjects and filmmakers, it will reorder the worldview of whoever sees it. Seven years in the making, it demands to be experienced not just because of the good it does but because of how unexpectedly good, even buoyant, it makes you feel.

“Buoyant” is not a word likely to be attached to anything connected to the tawdry, dehumanizing brothels of India’s Calcutta. But Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski’s exceptional work, winner of more than 20 major film festival awards (and nominated for this year’s best documentary Oscar), earns it by focusing on the hopes, dreams, talents and joys of the brothels’ most ebullient and unexpectedly gifted residents -- its children.

Making any kind of film at all was not on the mind of New York-based still photographer Briski when she decided to work on a project in the horrific, closed-off society that is Calcutta’s red-light district. It took her months to get a toehold in the place (a brothel owner finally let her have a room) and more months to establish a rapport with the women. While all this was going on, she kept noticing the children. How could you not?

As revealed in “Born Into Brothels,” these youngsters, often beaming with the most enrapturing smiles, have spirits as magnificent as their living conditions are miserable. Curious, energetic and fun loving, they are the most winsome, delightfully childlike children you can imagine. This despite a complete and unsentimental understanding, especially on the part of the girls, about how bleak their prospects are, an understanding that questions from older women -- “When are you going to join the line?” -- only serve to underscore.

This contrast between upbeat temperaments and bleak situations was one of the factors that led Briski, whose photographic equipment fascinated the children, to give a group of them point-and-shoot cameras and encourage them to capture the world through their own eyes.

What happened next surprised everyone, Briski very much included. Not only did the children, filled with a new sense of wonder and importance, throw themselves completely into this new world of proof sheets, grease pencils and loops, they also turned out to have tangible ability, including an unmistakable gift for composition.

It was at this point that Briski, who had no previous video experience, decided to document what was going on. She involved Kauffman, a New York documentary film editor and cameraman, and together they focused on the experiences of a core group of eight children.

So we meet Puja, a bold and lively pixie from a Brahmin family who is the descendant of three generations of prostitutes. We meet shy Kochi, who says wistfully, “If I got an education, I wonder what I could become?” And then there is sensitive, emotional Avijit, clearly the most gifted of the group, with the temperament to go along with his talent.

One of the things that “Born Into Brothels” makes obvious without having to shout it is the ability art has to empower children, to give them a sense of achievement little else in their world can provide, pointing them as well toward even greater accomplishments in the future.

The experience of working with these children changes co-director Briski as well. Understanding that opportunity will not truly be possible for them without education, she embarks midway through the film on a mission to get her photography students accepted into good schools, a quest that turns out to have obstacles even the Fellowship of the Ring never had to deal with.

Because “Born Into Brothels” is above all else an unsentimental, real-world story, everything does not go as planned for these blossoming creators, who face pain and difficulty at every turn. But when things do go well -- when they, for instance, experience the pleasure of a group photo show -- the purity of their delight is transporting.

No matter what happens to these remarkable children, they never forget who they are and where they’ve come from. It’s young Avijit who summarizes the draw of this irresistible film when he says, critiquing someone else’s photograph, “Though it’s hard to face, we must look at it. Because it is the truth.”

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‘Born Into Brothels’

MPAA rating: R for some sequences of strong language

A ThinkFilm, in association with HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films, presentation. Producers/directors Ross Kauffman, Zana Briski. Executive producer Geralyn White Dreyfous. Cinematographers Ross Kauffman, Zana Briski. Editors Nancy Baker, Kauffman. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

Exclusively at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-3500. Filmmakers Briski and Kauffman will appear at the 7:30 p.m. screening today and the 2:50 and 5:10 p.m. screenings Sunday. An exhibition of the children’s photographs will be at the theater through Feb. 3, and online at www.kids-with-cameras.org.