Kids with Cameras

My best friend Daline had mentioned this documentary to me when we traveled to Peru, because the kids loved the cameras so much, and I finally got to watch it. When in Diamante, Peru we spent time outside showing them how to shoot the camera, and they showed us how to shoot a bow and arrow! I loved these kids. They had such amazing smiles and personalities! I sent back copies of photos to their community. Wonder what they thought of them...

Anyway so the doco Born into Brothels - which won the Academy Award - is an incredible story of a woman photographer who goes into the red light district of Calcutta India and befriends the children of the prostitutes there, and teaches them photography. Ultimately she is able to get a few of them into a couple of different boarding schools and also to sell their photos as art to raise money for their educations. During the film, one boy, Avijit, got selected to travel to Amsterdam to represent India in a photo show. The whole story is truly amazing. The woman, Zana Briski started a nonprofit organization Kids with Cameras which has now expanded into other countries. You can buy the prints of the images the kids shot with their cameras, and the website has updates on how the kids are doing now. So cool. It's so inspiring to me how they went in there and just through their love touched the lives of these kids. There has been some criticism by one guy involved in the film saying that the kids' lives were not improved, etc but I don't see how he can say that. He must be disgruntled in some way. I'm sure several of the kids perhaps are back there and you never know what they're doing but several of them have made changes and been given opportunities that they never would have had. It's a gritty and heart-wrenching yet ultimately very inspirational story. You so want everything to work out for these kids.

On another note my friend Elise just left and I have never laughed so hard in all my life. We are hatching up a great plan for a parody on a popular reality sitcom show which I'll keep to myself for now, and we have been dying laughing so hard tonight my throat is sore!!! That pic to the left is her at my house this evening - she was cracking me up with her hood!