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Canadian Features
Wendy Champagne, Canada, 2009, 77 minutes
How can you create a future from a past that dares not be told?
In BAS! Beyond the Red Light, 13 young girls who were sold and then rescued from Mumbai’s infamous network of gated brothels, confront the inner and outer perils of life and reveal their very personal story inside the big business of child trafficking.
The film explores the lesser known issue of rehabilitation and reintegration of the exploited girls from the children’s point of view. The story moves between gated brothels and guarded dormitories to a rehearsal studio where the girls practice bhangra dance moves learned from lazy afternoons in front of the dormitory television. The thread running through the film is a dance therapy program that the girls attend, facilitated by a Quebec choreographer. Aided by a translator, the choreographer is working with the girls to create a music video to get their story out to the rest of the world. The dance therapy program helps build the girls’ self-esteem and offer them the possibility of a future, different from the trauma they’ve experienced in their short lives. Although the choreographer’s therapeutic skills are not ideal, over the course of the film we get to see the girls transition from timid, angry or occasionally bored kids to loud, laughing and confident teenagers.
Shot over the course of three and a half years and beautifully photographed by cinematographer Katerine Giguere, the film captures the extraordinary beauty and honesty of the girls and juxtaposes this against the volatile backdrop of the largest Red Light area on the planet. Through intimate, sustained access to the girls and to Mumbai’s underworld, BAS! Beyond the Red Light interweaves dance rehearsals and candid observations from the girls themselves with testimony from a trafficker, a local politician and workers at the Rescue Foundation. Given the enormity of this crisis, it’s reassuring to see that there are a small group of dedicated and caring individuals who are working to make a difference in the lives of Mumbai’s most vulnerable citizens. This is a story that few have heard before.
Winner, NFB Colin Low Award for most innovative Canadian Documentary
Filmmaker in Attendance
Director’s biography
Wendy Champagne is an Australian writer and journalist living in Montreal. She wrote the script for the Australian documentary Women of the Earth in 2000. BAS! Beyond the Red Light is her first feature length documentary as a director.
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