{"id":68428,"date":"2005-02-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-alumnus-collaborator-nominated-for-academy-award-in-documentary-category\/"},"modified":"2005-02-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-14T00:00:00","slug":"uri-alumnus-collaborator-nominated-for-academy-award-in-documentary-category","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2005\/02\/uri-alumnus-collaborator-nominated-for-academy-award-in-documentary-category\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 alumnus, collaborator nominated for Academy Award in documentary category"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tFilm focuses on children born to Calcutta prostitutes<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. — February 14, 2005 — A 1989 graduate of the 溏心vlog免费B站 and his collaborator have been nominated for a 2005 Academy Award in the documentary film category. The awards program will be aired Sunday, February 27 on ABC.<\/p>\n


\n\tThirty-seven-year-old Ross Kauffman of Mahopac, N.Y., a marketing major and former lacrosse player when he was on the Kingston Campus, and his collaborator Zana Briski, have been nominated for their film, \u201cBorn Into Brothels.\u201d It features the children of prostitutes in the red light district of Calcutta, India. For Kauffman, a talented New York film editor and producer, and Briski, a world-renowned still photographer, it was their first foray into all aspects of cinemaphotography, directing, producing and editing.<\/p>\n

\tBriski lived in Calcutta and shot photos of the children of prostitutes in the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cZana lived in a small, dark room where many women and children shared their stories,\u201d Kauffman said. \u201cThe kids always wanted to play with her camera, so she decided to buy 20 point-and-shoot cameras and teach them photography. It was her way of trying to help the children in a small way.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBriski worked with them for about a year, and when she got the first contact sheets back, she was \u201cblown away by the quality of the images,\u201d Kauffman said.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cShe kept writing to me telling me about the kids and she began talking about doing a short film with me,\u201d said Kauffman.<\/p>\n


\nKauffman, who after years of stepping-stone jobs and long hours had established himself as a talent in the New York film industry, was initially unwilling to take the risk. \u201cI was trying to get my camera work off the ground, and I just wasn\u2019t ready. I knew such a project would take three or four years and we\u2019d go broke.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBack in New York City the tenacious Briski wasn\u2019t about two let up. She bought two video cameras, \u201cone for me for my birthday, and she went off to Calcutta with her own camera and shot four videotapes,\u201d Kauffman said.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cShe sent some tapes back to me, and when I watched them, I was totally hooked in the first few minutes,\u201d Kauffman said. \u201cI was in Calcutta three weeks later.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI was expecting a depressing story, but I saw kids so full of joy running around with their cameras, so proud to show their families what they had done. The kids kept us going through the hard times we faced in the four years of making the film.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWhile the project consumed about four years, Kauffman said he was in Calcutta off and on for two years.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe finished it the day before the 2004 Sundance Film Festival,\u201d said Kauffman, who became interested in film during the summer between his junior and senior years at 溏心vlog免费B站 while he was waiting tables in Newport. An obscure second-hand book called The Elements of Film that he picked up in a Newport shop piqued his interest. It wasn\u2019t long before he was reading everything he could on film and movies.<\/p>\n


\n\tAt Sundance, Kauffmann and Briski won the \u201cAudience Award\u201d and then they garnered more than 25 awards at other festivals, including \u201cBest Documentary of the Year\u201d by the National Board of Review, and \u201cBest Documentary of the Year\u201d by the Los Angeles Film Critics. They also received the \u201cDistinguished Documentary Achievement Award\u201d from the International Documentary Association and were chosen for the \u201cNextor Almendros Prize for Courage in Filmmaking\u201d by Human Rights Watch 2004. The documentary will be shown on HBO-Cinemax in June and July.<\/p>\n


\n\tWhile pleased with the Oscar nomination, Kauffman seems most satisfied with the personal connections he made. \u201cMy time with the kids in Calcutta is something I will never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tHe and Briski formed a foundation called Kids with Cameras (www.kids-with-cameras.org), and now whenever and wherever the film is shown, the children\u2019s photography is exhibited and sold. So far, $100,000 has been raised for the foundation, which will go toward the youngsters\u2019 education. Kauffman and Briski are also opening The School of Leadership and the Arts for the children.<\/p>\n


\n\tHe credits Briski with having the drive and the heart to tell a compelling story. \u201cShe followed her heart and roped me in. We never set out to produce an award-winning film; we just wanted to turn a camera on these incredible children and their work.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cSure, receiving an Oscar would be incredible, but much of this has already been incredible. People come out of this movie changed.\u201d\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film focuses on children born to Calcutta prostitutes KINGSTON, R.I. — February 14, 2005 — A 1989 graduate of the 溏心vlog免费B站 and his collaborator have been nominated for a 2005 Academy Award in the documentary film category. The awards program will be aired Sunday, February 27 on ABC. Thirty-seven-year-old Ross […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}