Born Into a Brothel, Studying at NYU

Greenwich Village is a long way from the brothel in Calcutta where Avijit Halder was raised, and while the 19-year-old just began his freshman year of studying film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, his experience with the medium goes back nearly a decade, when he was featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary “Born Into Brothels.”Of the eight children profiled in the film — all of whom are portrayed as children of prostitutes — Mr. Halder is the only one who has made it to America. “I’m here because I am lucky,” he said recently in an interview on the edge of Washington Square Park.Filmed in the chaotic, filthy streets of Calcutta’s red light district, “Born into Brothels” follows Mr. Halder’s difficult life: a drug-addicted father, a mother allegedly burned to death, and friends destined to “work the line.” “There is nothing called ‘hope’ in my future,” Mr. Halder says in the film.Despite all of this, Mr. Halder, then a charismatic 11-year-old, clings to his oil-painting hobby and with the help of one of the filmmakers, Zana Briski, learns how to take photographs. Ms. Briski sees him as a natural talent, and she navigates an endless maze of bureaucracy to secure him a passport to participate in a photography conference in Amsterdam.Following the Oscar win in 2004, the foundation associated with “Born into Brothels,” Kids with Cameras, came up with the funding to pay for Mr. Halder to attend a prestigious high school in New Hampshire, and, later, one in Utah.The summer after his junior year in high school, he found his niche at NYU’s film program for high school students. “It’s the only school I wanted to go to,” Mr. Halder said. For his family, “The big thing for them is being a doctor or an engineer — something before your name,” he said. “But somehow inside me there was a little bit of art.”So far, Mr. Halder says he couldn’t be happier: “It’s so free. This is what I wanted.”“The whole buzz and loudness is a lot like Calcutta,” he said. “I want to take a lot of photographs — all over New York. I want to walk across the whole island in one day.”The dean of the Tisch School of the Arts, Mary Schmidt Campbell, said in an interview that “Avijit was one of those students who just emerged as being a perfect fit.” Besides his compelling personal story, he was “a marvelous storyteller” and had “very compelling portfolio, academically and artistically,” Ms. Campbell said.“Once I got in, I was very excited, but I was sad at the same time: How was I going to pay for it?” Mr. Halder said.During his senior year, after a losing baseball game — he insists it’s a lot like cricket — a founding board member of Kids with Cameras, Geralyn White Dreyfous, called with the news that they had found the money. Kids with Cameras is covering $15,000, and NYU is paying the remainder of the $35,000 tuition.His classmates, with their encyclopedic knowledge of film, amaze him. “There are these moments in the classroom when they ask, ‘What’s your favorite line from this movie?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who are you guys?'” Mr. Halder said.“On weekends, that’s all I do, watch movies,” he said. His favorite films include “Water,” “American Beauty,” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Indian filmmaker Mira Nair is his favorite director, and he would love to make Bollywood movies.Outside of school he’s looking for a job “so I can send some money back home.” Although his family members “have no idea what America is or anything like that, they brag about me,” he said.“The first thing I really wanted to go see was the Statue of Liberty,” Mr. Halder said, thinking back to his first trip to New York. “In my dream of America, when I closed my eyes in India, the Statue of Liberty was in the middle of the city,” he said. On his second day in America, at Staten Island, a woman called out his name — the first of many times he’s been recognized.

Born Into a Brothel, Studying at NYU

Born Into a Brothel, Studying at NYU

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