Reviews
It does indeed take a village to raise a child—but it also takes a child to raise a child. Shot over three years, Maren R. Monsen and Nicole Newnham’s doc follows social activist Amlan Ganguly as he mentors kids living in a Calcutta squatters colony. His work isn’t about single-handedly lifting them out of poverty, but giving them the tools and the support to do it themselves. The camera lingers over the community organizer’s young protégés as they meander through the alleyways of their slum...
“If you want to start any kind of change,” says Amlan Ganguly in the remarkable documentary “The Revolutionary Optimists,” “start it with the children.” Ganguly, formerly a Calcutta attorney, now devotes his life to working with slum children in India. Through his nonprofit organization Prayasam, he empowers kids to become agents for change, teaching them that their destiny is not necessarily poverty and struggle — that they can work together to change their fates.
The film, directed...
One day while playing around on Google Maps, children from a squatters' village in Calcutta discover that their neighborhood has been completely overlooked by the digital mapmakers. Urged on by their teacher, Amlan Ganguly, they decide to create their own map for the community of 9,000. That's just one way Ganguly pushes them to question their lot.
In The Revolutionary Optimists, Stanford filmmakers Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen follow the story of Ganguly, a pied-piper...
The inspiring documentary "The Revolutionary Optimists" profiles a memorable quartet of youngsters from India whose attempts to effect change in their impoverished neighborhoods — as well as within themselves — offer a vital snapshot of developing world struggles and possibilities.
Producer-directors Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen spent several years tracking the hardscrabble lives of these kids in Kolkata, including Shikha and Salim, a pair of self-possessed friends (both...
The documentary “The Revolutionary Optimists” offers a lesson in current events with a glimpse of everyday life in India. But a more important takeaway can be gleaned from the film’s subject, Amlan Ganguly, who keeps his chin up even when the setbacks keep rolling in. He chips away at the obstacles before him, giving children tools to challenge the status quo in the slums they call home.
The movie, by directors Maren R. Monsen and Nicole Newnham, weaves together a few stories...
Obviously idealism drives The Revolutionary Optimists, a warmly observational documentary by the Bay Area-based team of Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen, but that's not to say it lacks pragmatism. "If you want to start any kind of change, start it with the children," says Alman Ganguly, a former lawyer, community leader, and life-altering mentor to many of the children of India's slums. These are kids who lack access to clean drinking water, or work grueling days in brickfields, or...
When filmmakers Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen first called former lawyer Amlan Ganguly of the Indian NGO Prayasam to approach him about being involved in a documentary project they were making about facilitators of social change, he quickly hung up on them.
“He told us to call him back at what would be 2 a.m. his time because he was so busy with the children,” Newnham recalls of the first conversation with the Prayasam founder. The NGO empowers kids to change their own...
Maren Grangier-Monsen and Nicole Newnham's The Revolutionary Optimists centers on Amlan Ganguly, a former lawyer who runs a school for children living in the various slums of Kolkata, India. At the school, children of all ages not only receive a fundamental education, but also instructions on how to demand and maintain their basic human rights, a course of action that makes sense given the daunting numbers presented by the filmmakers: 47 percent of girls in India are forced into marriage...
Nicole Newham and Maren Grainger-Monsen celebrate attempts to change the status quo in Calcutta's slums.
A documentary about urban poverty in India that offers immense cause for hopefulness without becoming Pollyannaish or downplaying the serious challenges its protagonists face, The Revolutionary Optimists lives up to its name, provided viewers understand "revolutionary" in the small-r sense of societal change via highly localized improvements. Word of mouth should be enthusiastic...
"The Revolutionary Optimists" takes us inside the work of a unique Bengali man, a dancer and former lawyer, who teaches kids living in urban slums not just how to read and write and dance, but also to empower themselves and their communities. We have seen this kind of thing before (i.e. "Brothels"), but "Optimists" is refreshing in that it presents a situation where the will to change comes not from the West, but from within.
Directors Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen also...
The forces at work in the India of The Revolutionary Optimists, an engaging documentary portrait of several children seeking to improve life in India's slums, appear overwhelming from almost every angle. Co-directors Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen lace their largely observational study with numbers: one clean-water tap for three neighborhoods; 9 million children working in brick mills; 47 percent of girls married by 18.
How does change come to such odds?
One answer...