Born Into Brothels Film Analysis

Photographer, Zana Briski in her documentary, “Born into Brothels,” tries to highlight the living conditions of children in the red light areas of Calcutta, India. Briski’s purpose is to provide education to the children, introduce the hobby of photography, and get the children out of the Brothels. She also aims to achieve global attention on the topic of child prostitution. The filmmaker adopts a benevolent tone towards the children in order to bond with them and rather a pitiful tone in general to seek emotional support from the audience to achieve her purpose.

Zana Briski successfully achieved her purpose her purpose of seeking global attention by winning an Academy award, and which in turn makes the documentary more credible by adding

into the Ethos. The documentary begins with a lot of vivid imagery and juxtaposition- comparing children’s innocence by displaying their eyes and obscene parts of the culture resulting in a sympathetic mood from the audience. The documentary utilizes a lot of close-up interviews which makes the audience feel connected with the characters, the children in this documentary. Diegetic and non-diegetic sounds are used in abundance, diegetic sounds make the audience feel as if they’re there in the scene, this can be seen along with scenes on the streets. Nondiegetic sounds affect the mood when clubbed with imagery- in the beginning, the mood is mostly sympathetic and pitiful, but later on, it shifts to joyful and happy due to the music.

The movie is able to achieve it’s purpose mostly on the basis of Pathos, for instance, the mentioning of one of the child’s mother, video footage of children getting beaten, and vivid imagery of prostitution accounts for evoking sympathetic emotions in the audience, achieving the film’s purpose. Even though there is not much logos in the documentary, Zana Briski, a credible source, does mention some facts about percentages of kids being HIV positive in India, etc. Zana Briski establishes herself as a credible source by her knowing the kids already through photography lessons, which made the children comfortable with her, tries her best in a foreign country to provide the children a good education, and the most importantly, she winning the Academy awards for this documentary.

The documentary utilizes a lot of cinematic techniques such as natural lighting, no editing, close-up interviews, eye-level cameras, etc to make the audience feel connected with the children in the documentary, and making the audience feel sympathy towards the children. The documentary mainly utilizes parts of various documentary modes- the expository mode, the observational mode, and the interactive mode in the effort to make the documentary seamless and give the audience a real word view, as if they are right there in the scene.

Cinematic techniques used in the documentary affect the diction, tone, and the mood of the film. Diction is affected by dialogues and visual imagery- jargon, vulgar, casual, and academic. The tone that the filmmaker adopts a sympathetic, pitiful, motivational, and apologetic tone which supports the filmmaker’s purpose of seeking global attention to child prostitution and getting the kids out of the brothels. Zana Briski adopted a hopeful attitude, and she was focused on getting a better future for the children, she did what she could which establishes her well as a credible source. Her viewpoint was that the brothels have a negative impact on the kids and they might never be able to get out of there, forced into prostitution, if not helped.

Lastly, Zana Briski successfully achieved her purpose of achieving global attention on child prostitution and got the children out of brothels by her credibility in her Oscar-winning documentary, “Born into Brothels.”