Film Review: The Revolutionary Optimists

Inspired by their teacher, children in the slums of Calcutta become community activists.

<a href="http://www.itvs.org/films/revolutionary-optimists">ITVS</a>

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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 figure who left his job as a lawyer to find more meaningful work through his foundation Prayasam. They chronicle his efforts to turn the kids into mini-activists. The film opens with Salim and Sikha, two of Ganguly’s bright-eyed disciples, who walk the streets of their slum speaking to friends, neighbors, and anyone who will listen about the problems their community faces. They enlist other children to act as town criers to get out the word about polio vaccines, meet with local officials about getting a potable water hookup to serve the village, and work together to transform a trash heap into a soccer pitch for the community. 

Ganguly tries to instill in his students that they can break away from the paradigms enforced by poverty. But an entrenched caste system, glacial bureaucracy, and cultural inertia make it an uphill battle. India boasts the second fastest growing economy behind China, but it also has more child laborers than any other country in the world. One-third of all girls are pulled out of school by the time they are 11, and many are quickly married off to older men. In describing the odds his son faces, Ganguly’s father invokes Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Dream” speech: “That dream included eradication of poverty in the land of plenty,” the old man says. “Amlan…” he continues. “has to [do] this in the land of nothingness.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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