Born into Brothel fans born yesterday

Born into Brothel fans born yesterday as Oscar christens White wo-Man's Burden Brothel director exploits Indians while she tries to save them <!--break--> <font size="2"><p><font size="3">What did I like about the film? The lady that the film is about is doing good things, but should that give her a free pass to make a movie about herself? <img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/mamuni_self_portrait.jpg"><br></font></p><p><font size="3">Zana Briski, a British-born, New York-based photographer spent a string of months traveling down Heart of Darkness – this time it was the brothels of Calcutta. </font></p><p><font size="3">For the first half of the movie, little poor Indian boys and girls frolic around the red light district, catching its chaos with their raw photographic eye. Then instead of the film being about the children, Briski made the film about herself.</font></p><p><font size="3">Enter the proverbial third-world-women villain. The conflict is between Briski and the prostitute moms who want their children not to go off with this crazy white woman and her cameras. </font></p><p><font size="3">Zoom-in on Briski’s annoyed face as she converses with the mothers via translators - translators that never really get any face time themselves. Maybe with some animation and special effects Briski could have spoken Bengali. Hey there is always <i>Born in the Brothels 2</i>.</font></p><p><font size="3">Her film shows a mother pummeling a daughter and screaming vicious obscenities at a neighbor. This encapsulates Briski as Mother Theresa and every other brown woman we see as malicious crack-whore. </font></p><p><font size="3">Briski runs into resistance at city hall retrieving her students’ birth certificates, social security cards, etc. Cameras focus in on the cluttered filing system of this backward, backward country. Briski is losing it. You can see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice tone, she wants to say it: &quot;haven’t you people heard of Excell, Instant Messanger, the internet?&quot; Speaking of, Briski has a website that might have some of the pictures from the children this film was supposed to be about: http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/ Briski vilifies the mothers, going for the gratuitous sex-scene and audiences eat it up.</font></p><p><font size="3">Were <em>Brothel</em> fans born yesterday? Wasn't this simply <i>City of Joy</i> with a camera, The Last Samurai with Fuji, Dances With Wolves turned Bhangra with Prostitutes. This was Cool Runnings on Kodak. Call it Indigenous Minds, instead of curing poor black children from their ghetto-school symptoms with Snickers candy bars, Michelle - Zana Briski – Pfeiffer frees the brown Brothel kids with Kodak! And so the film liner reads, &quot;Zana Briski gives each of the children a camera and teaches them to look at the world with new eyes.&quot; <img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/puja_man.jpg"><br></font></p><font size="2"><p><font size="3">In India’s past there was such thing as &quot;two rupee&quot; Christians. Christian missionaries would pay Indians to convert from Hinduism to Christianity. Now, instead of bibles to give away, Briski comes with cameras, film is her religion, and she is bringing it to the natives whether they like it or not. On a long bus trip some of her students fall asleep and Brick films that. The only problem is that it is taboo in Indian culture to photograph anyone while they are sleeping.</font></p><p><font size="3"><em>Still the Chidren Are Here</em>, was another documentary that ran at the High Falls Film Festival**, also set in India, also focusing on a small outcast niche - The Garos of Meghalaya – a people of Tibetan-Burmese origin who have maintained their isolation from urban and westernized India. The director, Dinaz Stafford, also born in Britain, was raised in Bombay, and managed to keep herself out of it, without any of those all-knowing voice-overs either. Dinaz’ film received no attention. Go figure</font></p></font><p><font size="3">Should it be a surprise that Briski’s film - hyping photographic missionary work to all corners of the globe - was so embraced by the Vatican of film – Rochester, NY and its High Falls’ Film Festival, and then again last month at Kodak Theaters’ Oscar pageant in Hollywood. This in perfect time for Kodak to roll out its new film, Professional Ultima 100, especially designed for the natives.</font></p><p><font size="3">It's true, the new product came out in 2003 and it advertises: &quot;Kodak Professional Ultima 100 is a color negative film that is tailor-made specifically for Indian photographers and the Indian market. Researched for you and your clients’ needs, this film is designed to perform to specifications for the Indian skintone. The sharp detailed colorful images, smooth, specifically adapted skintone for Indians giving a fairer, smoother images will make your customers love your pictures.&quot; * <img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/kochi_stairs.jpg"><br></font></p><p><font size="3">New York Times film critic, A.O. Scott, writes, &quot;Briski's efforts to get the children out of the red light district and into boarding school, is a story that yields both optimism and a recognition of just how cruel and intractable the conditions that face these children and others like them really are.&quot;</font></p><p><font size="3">Another theme that proves cruel and intractable by this film is the popular acceptance of yet another round of White wo-Man’s burden.</font></p><p><font size="3">*** <a href="http://www.highfallsfilmfestival.com/2004/filmsection/stillthechildrenarehere.html">http://www.highfallsfilmfestival.com/2004/filmsection/stillthechildrenarehere.html</a></font></p><p><font size="3">* http://wwwin.kodak.com/IN/images/en/corp/img/products/films/Kodak_Ultima_Lflt_V1.12.pdf</font></p></font>

<p>Born into Brothel fans born yesterday as<br /> Oscar christens White wo-Man's Burden<br /> Brothel director exploits Indians while she tries to save them</p> <!--break--><p><font size="2"> <p><font size="3">What did I like about the film? The lady that the film is about is doing good things, but should that give her a free pass to make a movie about herself? <img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/mamuni_self_portrait.jpg" /><br /></font></p> <p><font size="3">Zana Briski, a British-born, New York-based photographer spent a string of months traveling down Heart of Darkness – this time it was the brothels of Calcutta. </font></p> <p><font size="3">For the first half of the movie, little poor Indian boys and girls frolic around the red light district, catching its chaos with their raw photographic eye. Then instead of the film being about the children, Briski made the film about herself.</font></p> <p><font size="3">Enter the proverbial third-world-women villain. The conflict is between Briski and the prostitute moms who want their children not to go off with this crazy white woman and her cameras. </font></p> <p><font size="3">Zoom-in on Briski’s annoyed face as she converses with the mothers via translators - translators that never really get any face time themselves. Maybe with some animation and special effects Briski could have spoken Bengali. Hey there is always <i>Born in the Brothels 2</i>.</font></p> <p><font size="3">Her film shows a mother pummeling a daughter and screaming vicious obscenities at a neighbor. This encapsulates Briski as Mother Theresa and every other brown woman we see as malicious crack-whore. </font></p> <p><font size="3">Briski runs into resistance at city hall retrieving her students’ birth certificates, social security cards, etc. Cameras focus in on the cluttered filing system of this backward, backward country. Briski is losing it. You can see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice tone, she wants to say it: "haven’t you people heard of Excell, Instant Messanger, the internet?" Speaking of, Briski has a website that might have some of the pictures from the children this film was supposed to be about: <a href="http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/">http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/</a> Briski vilifies the mothers, going for the gratuitous sex-scene and audiences eat it up.</font></p> <p><font size="3">Were <em>Brothel</em> fans born yesterday? Wasn't this simply <i>City of Joy</i> with a camera, The Last Samurai with Fuji, Dances With Wolves turned Bhangra with Prostitutes. This was Cool Runnings on Kodak. Call it Indigenous Minds, instead of curing poor black children from their ghetto-school symptoms with Snickers candy bars, Michelle - Zana Briski – Pfeiffer frees the brown Brothel kids with Kodak! And so the film liner reads, "Zana Briski gives each of the children a camera and teaches them to look at the world with new eyes." <img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/puja_man.jpg" /><br /></font></p> <p><font size="2"> <p><font size="3">In India’s past there was such thing as "two rupee" Christians. Christian missionaries would pay Indians to convert from Hinduism to Christianity. Now, instead of bibles to give away, Briski comes with cameras, film is her religion, and she is bringing it to the natives whether they like it or not. On a long bus trip some of her students fall asleep and Brick films that. The only problem is that it is taboo in Indian culture to photograph anyone while they are sleeping.</font></p> <p><font size="3"><em>Still the Chidren Are Here</em>, was another documentary that ran at the High Falls Film Festival**, also set in India, also focusing on a small outcast niche - The Garos of Meghalaya – a people of Tibetan-Burmese origin who have maintained their isolation from urban and westernized India. The director, Dinaz Stafford, also born in Britain, was raised in Bombay, and managed to keep herself out of it, without any of those all-knowing voice-overs either. Dinaz’ film received no attention. Go figure</font></p> <p></p></font> </p><p><font size="3">Should it be a surprise that Briski’s film - hyping photographic missionary work to all corners of the globe - was so embraced by the Vatican of film – Rochester, NY and its High Falls’ Film Festival, and then again last month at Kodak Theaters’ Oscar pageant in Hollywood. This in perfect time for Kodak to roll out its new film, Professional Ultima 100, especially designed for the natives.</font></p> <p><font size="3">It's true, the new product came out in 2003 and it advertises: "Kodak Professional Ultima 100 is a color negative film that is tailor-made specifically for Indian photographers and the Indian market. Researched for you and your clients’ needs, this film is designed to perform to specifications for the Indian skintone. The sharp detailed colorful images, smooth, specifically adapted skintone for Indians giving a fairer, smoother images will make your customers love your pictures." * <img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/kochi_stairs.jpg" /><br /></font></p> <p><font size="3">New York Times film critic, A.O. Scott, writes, "Briski's efforts to get the children out of the red light district and into boarding school, is a story that yields both optimism and a recognition of just how cruel and intractable the conditions that face these children and others like them really are."</font></p> <p><font size="3">Another theme that proves cruel and intractable by this film is the popular acceptance of yet another round of White wo-Man’s burden.</font></p> <p><font size="3">*** <a href="http://www.highfallsfilmfestival.com/2004/filmsection/stillthechildrenarehere.html">http://www.highfallsfilmfestival.com/2004/filmsection/stillthechildrenarehere.html</a></font></p> <p><font size="3">* <a href="http://wwwin.kodak.com/IN/images/en/corp/img/products/films/Kodak_Ultima_Lflt_V1.12.pdf">http://wwwin.kodak.com/IN/images/en/corp/img/products/films/Kodak_Ultima...</a></font></p> <p></p></font></p>