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March 29, 2006
ANDOVER — Ross Kauffman, co-director of the film Born Into Brothels — winner of the 2004 Academy Award Best Documentary Feature — has been named the 2006 Kayden Visiting Artist at Phillips Academy. He will be on campus for a three-day residency from April 5th thru April 7th.
On Wednesday, April 5th at 7:00 p.m., Kauffman will present a viewing of his film in Kemper Auditorium, located in the Elson Art Center on campus. Following the viewing, Kauffman will participate in a Q&A session and then attend a reception in the Underwood Room. The event is open to the public and is free of charge. Kauffman will also participate in classes on April 6th and 7th.
In Born Into Brothels, directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman chronicle the amazing transformation of the children of prostitutes who live in the red light district of Calcutta. These children are the most stigmatized people of the district, and in the face of abject poverty, abuse, and despair, they have little possibility of escaping their mother’s fate or for creating another type of life.
Briski, a professional photographer, gives them lessons and cameras, igniting latent sparks of artistic genius that reside in these children, who live in the most sordid and seemingly hopeless world.
Devoid of sentimentality, Born Into Brothels defies the typical tear-stained tourist snapshot of the global underbelly. Briski spends years with these kids and becomes part of their lives. Their photographs are prisms into their souls, rather than anthropological curiosities or primitive imagery, and a true testimony of the power of the indelible creative spirit.
An exhibition that includes 20 of the children’s photographs currently is on display in the Gelb Gallery, located in George Washington Hall, through April 17th. For more information about this film and photographic project, go to www.kids-with-cameras.org.
The Kayden Visiting Artist program is funded by the Bernard & Louise Kayden Fund, established in 1970 by Bernard & Louise Kayden, parents of Jerold S. Kayden ’71.
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