Announcing a new Meetup for Meditation & Inner Spirituality Group - New Haven!

What: Conscious Movie Night: Award-Winning "Born Into Brothels"

When: November 28, 2008 7:30 PM

Where: Click the link below to find out!

Meetup Description: Hi everyone!
We are still having our November Conscious Movie Night this Friday. Yep, the day after Thanksgiving. We are going to be watching a film that I have heard many wonderful things about: Born Into Brothels. Now this is not a title I would imagine would go with a movie I would normally want to see, and you may think the same thing (or you may not!). But I have heard from a bunch of people whose movie reviews I trust, that this is a really good movie. Uplifting, a story of hope and possiblity, even though set in a very sad place: the brothels of Calcutta. See the movie description below. So come on over, hang out with a great group of people, and see and talk about a worthwhile film.
Blessings to you all this holiday,
Rev. Johanna

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Editorial review from Amazon.com
Set in Calcutta's notorious red-light district, Born Into Brothels explores the lives of its most vulnerable citizens. Directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, the picture?s eight small subjects shot the still footage themselves. Briski first teaches them how to shoot and edit. The children then put her lessons into practice. They gain confidence as the film proceeds, yet there's always the threat that any of the girls, especially 14-year-old Suchitra, could be forced to "join the line" (work as a prostitute). For most, it's only a matter of time. The boys don't have it much better. Promising photographer Avijit's mother is gone and his father is a drug addict. "Without help," Briski notes, "they're doomed," so she takes matters a step further and tries to get them out of the brothels altogether. Produced for HBO, this heartbreaking, if inspiring film won the 2005 Academy Award for best documentary feature. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description
2004 ACADEMY AWARD WINNER FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY
BORN INTO BROTHELS is an inspiring look at the transformative journey of a group of extraordinary children in Calcutta?s red light district. Voted Best Documentary by the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. BORN INTO BROTHELS, which was produced and directed by New York based filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, also garnered over 20 major film festival awards including the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Best Documentary Award at the Seattle International Film Festival.

A tribute to the resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art, BORN INTO BROTHELS is a portrait of several unforgettable children who live in the red light district of Calcutta where their mothers work as prostitutes. Zana Briski, a New York based photographer, gives each of these youngsters a camera and teaches them how to take pictures, simultaneously causing them to look at their world with new eyes. Together with Ross Kauffman, Briski captures the magical way in which beauty can be found in the most unlikely of places and how a bright and promising future becomes a possibility for children who previously had no future at all.

Touching and heartfelt, yet devoid of sentimentality, BORN INTO BROTHELS defies the tear-stained tourist snapshot of the global underbelly. Briski spent years with these children and became a part of their lives. Their photographs are prisms into their souls, rather than anthropological curiosities, and a true testimony to the power of the indelible creative spirit.

Learn more here:
http://www.meetup.com/meditation-and-spirituality-in-New-Haven/calendar/9237485/