Thursday, January 20, 2011

Born Into Brothels & Hampe

In “Ethics to Making a Documentary,” Hampe is concerned with the legal and ethical rights documentarians have in regards to the people they portray on film. He points out that filmmakers may not always get consent in the form of a signed release, and may sometimes be as informal as asking people to leave the room if they do not want to be filmed. The part that stood out to me the most was Hampe’s discussion about whether or not filmmakers personally care about the effects of their documentary on the people who are being filmed. In “Born into Brothels”, I would like to argue that Zana Brinski and Ross Kauffmann made the film solely for the possible effects it may have on the children portrayed. We cannot know what kind of consent they were given to film the children, but we can know that the after-effects of the film concerning the children were overwhelmingly positive. The documentary brought into many people’s consciousness the plight of the offspring of prostitutes in India’s red light districts, and the inevitability for many of them of turning to the same trade. For some of the children, such as Avijit, the project had more of a positive ending, with him able to attend a young photographer’s conference in Amsterdam. Some of the other children were enrolled in private schools stemming from the goodwill of outsiders after their situation was revealed. Overall, “Born into Brothels” was made for the benefit of the children, and the ethics of consent for them do not matter as much considering this fact.

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