Geralyn White Dreyfous

Geralyn White Dreyfous is an Academy Award-winning producer and Executive Director of the Salt Lake City Film Center. She is internationally known in the documentary film and humanitarian aid communities. She worked as the head of the Special Projects office at the Kennedy School of Government, reporting to Dean Graham Allison. Dreyfous taught Documentary and Narrative Writing with Dr. Robert Coles at Harvard University and was a founder of the DoubleTake Community Service Corporation, which published DoubleTake Magazine. She also founded the DoubleTake Summer Institute that brought educators, activists and emerging storytellers together to explore the connections between service, moral inquiry and storytelling. Geralyn produced The Day My God Died, a documentary on the global trafficking of children for sex and served as Executive Producer of the 2004 Academy Award-winning documentary, Born Into Brothels about the children of Calcutta prostitutes. The film gave birth Kids With Cameras, an international foundation that uses photography to capture the imaginations of children, to empower them, building confidence, self-esteem and hope. Sales from the children's photography allows them to attend school and leave the brothel. Geralyn is currently working on building a school and boarding home (Hope House) for children who were born in the red light district in Calcutta.

Avijit Halder
Avijit is now 18 years old and living in Salt Lake City. His talent as a photographer emerged during his work with Zana Briski, the filmmaker who began teaching photography to children in the Calcutta's red light district. His photographs have been shown at the International Center of Photography in New York City and during the course of the filmmaking, he was selected to participate in an International Photography School in Amsterdam. He continues to practice his art and is also making short films. The photo above, taken when Avijit was 11, can be purchased at the Kids with Cameras website.

Back to Friday's events.