Kalighat, in central Kolkata, is one of the most sacred pilgrimage centres in India. As in the case with many such destinations, right next to it there’s a red-light area, one of the oldest in the city of joy. For more than a century, the sacred and the sacrilegious have existed side by side. And there grows a film movement, away from all the limelight, all those shutterbugs. A group of young amateur filmmakers, including the children of sex workers and the enthusiastic youth of the area, have found a new purpose in their lives.

There’s a universally held belief in the world of filmmaking. It’s that film has to be treated as a business, and to treat it as anything else would be foolish. But is it so? Thanks to a confluence of factors, it’s perfectly acceptable to treat film as a personal or collaborative artform done for its own sake rather than in pursuit of money. That’s what inspired the young generation of the Kalighat red-light area to choose filmmaking as their way of expressing their feelings and build a film community.

It all started in 2019 when Kolkata-based independent filmmaker Bipuljit Basu tried a unique experiment by making a ‘participatory film’ for the first time in Kalighat’s red-light area. He discovered a group of young amateur film-makers, all children of sex workers, and roped them in as line producers for his short film ‘Midnight Clause’.

“I wanted to make a completely participatory film. Otherwise, there was no point in making it. But we couldn’t find a way as the area is an overtly sensitive one, and we hardly got a chance to enter there with my unit. With a small team, we started spending time in the Kalighat red-light area started speaking to various people, local clubs and NGOs. But we were not getting any response from them. Then, an unprecedented incident took place. During our meetings with various people in Kalighat, we identified a group of young people who happened to be sex workers’ children, and all of them are creative amateur short-film makers who upload their videos on Youtube. I started motivating them to collaborate with us as a technician team. Soon, their mothers also joined them. They belong to a vulnerable group, and keeping them motivated and focused to join a mainstream film was my initial challenge,” Bipuljit shares with ETimes.

Interestingly, Bipuljit recalls one incident from the script-reading session of ‘Midnight Clause’. He read the screenplay to the sex workers, mothers and children, and asked them to get back to him with their perspective. One week later, when they responded, what a transformation they had made!

“On that day, I understood what deconstruction can be! What I couldn’t understand from reading hundreds of pages for years, they taught me in just an hour. They groomed and trained the actors to act like them. The women, including mothers, worked on the costume and make-up, sharing their knowledge and the way they dress up every day. The Cam-on team and the community were involved from location hunting, art setting, and production controlling to acting, casting finalization, assisting in direction and editing. They also made a documentary on the entire process of how they emerged as a film production house, the first from a red-light area in India. We were astonished by their performance,” added the filmmaker.

Initially, before the idea of forming a group came into being, the boys and girls mostly amused themselves by shooting images using their mobile phones. Their common passion for cinema brought them together, and they decided to take up filmmaking seriously. The Cam-On group came into being even though they had not yet named themselves. They pooled their resources to buy a second-hand video camera for Rs.11,000 and, with the new equipment, made their most successful film (in terms of viewership) to date, ‘Poltu’s Life’, a short film on the travails of a young boy growing up in the red-light area of Kalighat. The role was played by the 12-year-old son of a sex worker. Since then they have uploaded quite a few short films on YouTube such as ‘Ancient Ring’, ‘Speechless’, ‘Love Decision’, ‘Wish’ to name a few.

It was not just love for cinema that was the driving force behind the formation of Cam-On; it was also a desperate need to project the reality of their lives. “We grew up here and faced all the usual problems a child can face growing up in a red-light area: the abuse, the drunks, being kept down, and so on. When we started watching movies, particularly Bollywood films, we realized that what was being shown was not the reality that we face. So we resolved to depict our reality through the films we made with Cam-On,” said one of the youths who’s also an important member of the filmmakers’ group.

One of the main problems that children of red-light areas face in the outside world is the stigma attached to their background. The exposure and recognition their films will give them will be a crucial step in the long struggle for social acceptance for the children of Kalighat. “We hope to make people understand that the children here are like all other children. We do not want the children of today to face the same problems we faced when we were growing up here. Getting an opportunity to work on this film is a huge learning experience for us,” said Raju Mondol, a teacher from the area and also a key member of Cam-On who now dreams big.

The shooting of ‘Midnight Clause’ was finally wrapped up on March 18 last year but from March 22 the nationwide lockdown started amid the pandemic and everything got stalled including the entertainment industry in Bengal. What’s interesting is the Cam-On team kept their fight alive. They soon started learning the details of post-production under the guidance of Partha Barman and Probhatendu Mondol at the Tollygunge Film Service studio. Many of them are now working in mega serials as editing assistants and in post-production units as well successfully. Some of them are now working with critically acclaimed filmmaker Q.

Cam-On’s works are getting noticed now. Europe’s one of the biggest film fests International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and Nordisc Panorama’s senior programmer Martijin Te Pas have already joined hands with them as a mentor. Many international co-production houses have shown interest after watching Cam-On’s works. They have once again teamed up with Bipuljit Basu for his next ‘Redlight to Limelight. This is not the end. In June, the films made by Cam-On will have their theatrical premiere in Kolkata and women and children from other red-light areas will be present there to witness this extraordinary journey. And who knows? They might get inspired by Cam-On to start their own artistic journey!

The initiative, more precisely the film movement, has already achieved something very special. It’s giving recognition to talent that would otherwise have remained cornered, unnoticed. It has also opened a window of opportunity for those who used to bang on closed doors earlier; and, most importantly, this group of aspiring filmmakers has managed to inject hope and enthusiasm in a community that’s been kept shrouded in darkness and despair.

This Women’s Day let’s celebrate the spirit of filmmaking with this young breed of artists and brave women from the area. After all, Sex worker mothers and their next generation and the local youth joining the film industry for alternative livelihood options and deciding not to let their future stuck in sex trade have a relevant social impact in women empowerment discourse.