Redlight to Limelight

The power of creativity and imagination comes to light in an unexpected place in Redlight to Limelight. In Kalighat, a red-light district in a poor neighborhood of Kolkata, a group of Indian sex workers and their daughters and sons collaborate as the film collective CAM-ON. Their short videos, in which they also appear as actors, are based on their own hard lives. We follow them as they work on a film about a mother who rebels when her daughter is also forced into prostitution.

In a socially engaged, cinéma vérité style, Bipuljit Basu’s first feature-length documentary shows what CAM-ON means to its members. No longer content with simply uploading their films to YouTube, they decide to organize a public screening in their neighborhood. Many of the women have experienced violence and abuse. Now everyone can see who they really are.

Basu shows not only their concerns, but also their joy, solidarity and growing self-confidence—as seen when they confront a local resident who objects to the filming. Their liberating experience with CAM-ON gives them new hope and a new purpose in life, as evidenced by the film’s closing credits.