..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

 

 

When you meet Ross Kaufman and Zana Briski after seeing their movie Born Into Brothels, the most powerful documentary I've seen at Sundance this year, you immediately want to throw back a few beers and play poker with him and marry her, knowing that you could never get away with an inconsequential life with a woman like this reminding you of what is really important.

And then, a few minutes pass…

And you feel pretty much the same way.

Ask these two to describe how they got here and you get stories at the neat opposite ends of the spectrum. Zana Auntie, as she is described throughout the film, will explain how she never really meant to go to India, much less spend three years there teaching a group of children how to express themselves visually. Ross Uncle, who is never mentioned in the film, but was in Calcutta shooting for a total of six months, was almost ready to get out of "the biz," thinking that maybe he'd stay in the game as a professional cameraman and buying digital cameras towards that end. And yet, these two, together as a couple as they decided to make a movie about the brothels and Zana's experience with these children, came to the material with no less than the hand of the inevitable guiding them.

Discussing the world they found themselves in, you would think that they were talking about Hollywood. The government is comfortable - off the record, of course - with the brothels, which serve as a release valve for the rather uptight community. The brothel owners want to keep their businesses going. And the children born into that world rarely get a chance to see anything beyond that world, so they naturally acclimate to their surroundings. A perfect eco-system, were it not for the fact that the women, children and ultimately even the men, are living in a cage without bars - the most terrible kind of victims, those who do not even know they are victims.

At first, Ms. Briski tried to attack the central figures in the brothel system, the women. But she found a surprising resistance to the idea of change. So in time, she used her skills as an acclaimed photographer to offer something to the children of that world. She taught them how to express how they felt about the things they saw every day, still too young to be as jaded as their parents, and to bring those feelings to life with a camera. She was blown away with the natural ability of the kids. The gathered children quickly built a hierarchy within itself and brought their own shared knowledge to the teachings of Zora Auntie.

After much discussion about whether working together was the best thing for their relationship, one tape shot by Briski, sent to Kauffman in New York, convinced them both that there was a film here that needed to be made. That led to two three month periods of shooting. First, there was the kind of pure "brothel kids learning to shoot photographs and coming up with amazing results in the midst of horrible conditions" shoot. And then, Kauffman returned and they shot most of the elements of the story in which Briski is as much the center of the story as the children are. The 85 minute finished product is the story of one person's fight to do something in the face of impossible odds, the story of some children getting a taste of opportunity for the first times in their lives, and the story of a system that doesn't want to find a solution to itself.

Briski was not a fan of the idea of making a movie that has her as a leading character. But Kauffman knew. And you can almost hear the details of the conversation as you watch and listen to the two together. There is enough ego and intelligence in both of them never to want to admit it, but he seems to be the one who is of the world, aware of the problems of reality and ready to do the best he can to make extraordinary things work and she seems to be the true believer, who will not allow logic or the odds to ever get in her way. It's not that she seems flighty and he seems anal. Not at all. They are simply opposite numbers that add up to more than the sum of their very impressive parts. Adam & Eve on an Eastern European raft… wreck em.

The next project for Briski is building a foundation to bring professional photographers to other troubled parts of the world to teach more children how to shoot photographs, a form of expression that has become more and more accessible in recent years. (However, it needs to be pointed out that Briski takes great pride in teaching the children how to edit themselves and to be selective about the images they embrace and the ones they leave behind.) Funding for the project will come from private donors and other charitable foundations, but also from sales of a book of the photography by the kids, as well as sales of the paintings in exhibits like the one currently taking place here in Park City.

To see the images, please go to this site. The web page for the foundation and the sale of photos will be at kids-with-cameras.org. And do indulge your charitable instincts. There are few opportunities to have this kind of direct effect on the lives of people who are dying for the opportunity to express themselves, in some cases, literally. Also, to find out more about Zana Briski, try this site or this site or the last part of this CNN transcript.

Ross Kauffman will also be part of the next year of festivals and screenings and book sales and whatever special opportunities that HBO can help bring to the table. By the time the film airs, likely in 2005, Briski's foundation should be moving along steadily, ready for the push that will come when people see the film. It is not an experience that will allow you to just switch the channel.

And as time passes, I'm sure you will see more from both of these filmmakers, each improving the world in their own way.

IN OTHER SUNDANCE ACTION, two hot buzz films continued to get hot buzz and buys here at Ice Station Redford.

Napoleon Dynamite is a true independent, co-written by an Idaho husband and wife, and directed by the husband. The story of a misfit and the misfits around him is reminiscent of Todd Solondz' Welcome To The Dollhouse, without the harsh edge. Of course, some people like hard edges. But Fox Searchlight - which won a five way bidding war for the film, paying about $5 million for worldwide rights in the end - believes that the expected PG-13 rating and the sweetness of Napoleon, Pedro, Uncle Rico, Kip and Grandma's pet llama, Tina, will make the film a more mainstream hit than the cult success of Dollhouse.

(You may read reports that the film sold for $3 million, but at least two other distributors had $4 million-plus offers on the table for the film before Searchlight won out.)

The bidding war for The Motorcycle Diaries, which came to Sundance without a distributor and I feel has the greatest upside for theatrical grosses, ended up with the film parking in Focus Features' driveway - for $4 million for U.S. rights only. No Canada… no international. That may be a bit much.

Ironically, I would have thought the choice at this high price was reasonable for Warner Independent, which is still looking for a foothold (a.k.a. a purchase to shout about) here at the festival. Even if they lost a couple of million dollars on the film (which may not happen to Focus), the prestige of the picture, would have sent the "right" signal about Mark Gill's new company, even if overpaying sends the "wrong" signal. Grabbing up Easy or The Woodsman might be nice, but both are sexually charged pictures with fewer mainstream elements than Motorcycle… even if Motorcycle is in Spanish.

Both companies have made the biggest buys of the festival - and likely to remain the biggest buys - and both have successful histories with analogous festival buys. Searchlight picked up Super Troopers at Sundance in 2002 for $2.5 million and grossed $18.5 million in domestic release. Focus' 2003 Cannes pick-up, Swimming Pool, grossed $10.1 million domestically. Alfonso Cuaron's hard-R rated Y Tu Mama Tambien did about $13 million in the U.S. Clearly, Focus is betting than a less arty film than Swimming Pool and a less sexual film than Y Tu Mama can do a domestic gross of more than $15 million with P&A under $5 million.

I liked both films and respect the originality of the Hesses, both at the typewriter and behind the camera. It will be a cult hit and the folks at Searchlight may well find a way to move it beyond that… it won't be easy or cheap, but it is possible. And for me, The Motorcycle Diaries is the best work of Walter Salles' by a long shot. The film is relaxed and never tries to push too hard, which is something that was a mark against Salles' earlier films. This film has a chance of being a true critics' darling that also crosses over to mainstream arthouse audience and the hungry Spanish-speaking audience in the U.S. It is also the only non-doc that we will probably be hearing about, out of Sundance, when next year's award season rolls around.

Day Four
Day Three
Day Two
Day One

 

- by David Poland