Vancouver Drift

This film was a documentary about the children in the red light district in Calcutta. Zana Briski, a photographer from New York decided to live among the women of the red light district. According to Zana, it is quite uncommon to see photographs from this area because many of the people working in this sector are embarrassed and do not like getting photographed by strangers; this is why she felt it was necessary to live amongst the women to gain their trust.
While living among these women, she started to get close to their children, the children of prostitutes. Not a teacher by profession, she offered to teach a photography class for the children, which were very excited. She gave each of them cameras and instructed them. In a way, it was like seeing through the eyes of the children.
She started to see the plight the children were in. Many of these girls would become prostitutes, and the boys would turn to crime if they continued to stay in the red light district. This was a generational problem. For example, Puja, one of the girls in the class came from a Bhraman family with the mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother all involved in prostitution. There was little question to whether she would also become a prostitute. By teaching the children about photography, Briski hoped to impart some skills to them, which would make them more appealing to boarding schools.
Getting the children into boarding schools would be very tough because the schools have a bias against children from the red light district, and the majority would not admit children from the red light district. In order to raise the funds needed to send the children to boarding school, Briski displayed their photographs in galleries as well as on an Amnesty International calendar. This shows one way the children were acting to help themselves earn money for boarding school.
When Briski managed to get three of the girls into the boarding school, there arose some complications with Puja’s (on of the girls who got accepted) grandmother. She did not want to have any conflict with Briski, so this is how she resisted. She said that she’d let her go willingly on any other day, but the day that they wanted to Puja to leave was a Thursday, and if she does anything special on a Thursday, something bad will happen. This form of resistance reminded me of the women that used the ghost stories in the Javanese factories to protest working conditions. It is in a different context, but I think an apt illustration of resistance, albeit against Briski, who wanted to help Puja. After Briski left, Puja’s grandmother withdrew her from the Sabera boarding school. Of the three girls, only one ended up staying at the boarding school.
Although I admire Briski’s heartfelt disposition towards the children, I question whether the best solution is to remove the children from their families and put them into boarding schools. From the results of Briski’s attempt, only one of the girls stayed in the boarding school. Her documentary would have more credit if they explored the role the child played in the household. Was the child essential in someway to the running of the household? Would her extraction affect the parent’s financially or culturally somehow?

--> on a side note, the photographs taken by the children were amazing. above is one of them taken i think by suchitra.