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The publicity poster for Smile Pinki |
US. An acclaimed documentary that covers the work of the world’s leading cleft charity, The Smile Train, has been nominated for an Oscar at the glamour event of the international film industry in Hollywood. [Click here to view a trailer of the film].
The news will give the charity almost priceless exposure and will hearten many in the travel retail industry – the sector has raised close to US$1 million for the charity over the past two years.
The world’s leading travel retailer, DFS Group, for example, is currently running a major cross-category campaign with leading vendors to raise funds for the cause.
Smile Pinki, a 39-minute film directed by Megan Mylan, is the true story of Pinki and Ghutaru, two young girls in rural India born desperately poor whose cleft lips have made them social outcasts.
The simple surgery that can cure them is a distant dream until they meet Pankaj, a social worker travelling village to village, gathering patients for a hospital that provides free surgery to thousands each year.
Told in a vibrant verite-style, rich with nuance and complexity, the film follows its two wide-eyed protagonists on a journey from isolation to embrace.
The work of G.S. Memorial hospital, featured in the film, is made possible by The Smile Train. The film’s release and community outreach will be used to build awareness and support for The Smile Train’s work.
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These images underline the inspirational work of The Smile Train – a cause close to travel retail’s collective heart |
The Smile Train is the world’s leading cleft charity with thousands of partners and programmes in 75 of the world’s poorest countries. Its mission is to help the more than 3 million children in developing countries who are suffering with unrepaired clefts.
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Click here to read the reaction of Steven Levitt, best-selling author of Freakonomics, to Smile Pinki |
For as little as US$250 and in as little as 45 minutes, they can provide cleft surgery that gives a child not just a new smile, but a new life. Since its beginning in 2000, The Smile Train has provided more than 309,000 free surgeries for children who would otherwise never have received it.
Produced in Hindi (with English subtitles), Smile Pinki was also a 2008 nominee for Best Documentary Short by the International Documentary Association. Director/Producer Megan Mylan is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and Guggenheim Fellow.
Here is an excerpt of an interview with Mylan by the International Documentary Association.
What inspired you to make Smile Pinki?
Megan Mylan: As a filmmaker who focuses on social issue documentaries, it’s rare that I get into a film knowing we’re likely to have a happy ending. I was excited to tell the story of this beautiful hospital and a team of doctors and social workers treating their patients with such compassion and quality care and making a positive impact. I continue to be inspired by the simple idea that the better we know each other, the better this world is, and I hope people come away from my documentaries feeling like they better understand the life of someone living a very different reality.
 Reflections of a cleft child |
| Take a look, a long look, at the image of Pinki looking into her mirror. Look at her eyes, not her mouth. They tell you everything you need to know about why The Smile Train is such a beautiful, life-transforming, life-affirming charity |
| More on The Moodie Blog |
What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them
Megan Mylan: The biggest challenge for me was communicating and finding common ground with the patients and families in the film. Like many of the patients, Pinki’s parents are illiterate dirt-farmers. They had never seen a movie or met a foreigner. I really wanted them to understand my motivation for making the film and gain their trust. I worked with a great field producer, Nandini Rajwade, who along with Pankaj Kumar, one of the social workers in the film, patiently translated my conversations from English to Hindi to the family’s dialect and back, but it was still hard to know through the levels of translation that I was being respectful and clear. I chose to trust the sensitivity of my team and rely on eye contact and instinct.
How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?
Megan Mylan: In many ways the film is very much how I envisioned it. I knew I wanted to make a vérité film with the young patients as the central characters. From my first research conversations, I felt that the story had a magical fairy tale quality to it even though it dealt with social ostracism and crushing poverty. But I was still surprised by how much a story that on the surface is about surgery, is really not at all a medical story. The work of the hospital is as much social work and counseling as it is medicine, and I was happy that that came through so clearly in the footage. While the children remain the main characters, I was thrilled that the wonderful humanity of the hospital team and the special environment they’ve created came through.
IDA:As you’ve screened Smile Pinki-whether on the festival circuit, or in screening rooms, or in living rooms-how have audiences reacted to the film? What has been most surprising or unexpected about their reactions?
Megan Mylan: I always love with vérité how much each viewer sees and discovers something different. I hadn’t anticipated how powerfully audiences would connect to Pinki’s father and the other parents in the film. Audiences – especially people with children of their own – comment frequently that they can relate to and are overwhelmed by the parents’ tremendous feeling of responsibility and hopelessness and that they feel a huge sense of relief when the children are freed from the burden of their clefts.
For more information on The Smile Train please visit www.TheSmileTrain.org
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