The Revolutionary Optimists

Pictured: Child activists working with Amlan, marching through the streets of Calcutta, using megaphones to spread health messages.

Credit: Courtesy of Ranjan Palit

Amlan Ganguly is a visionary. This lawyer-turned-community activist is not only changing a neighborhood, but also changing the way its youngest residents envision their lives. In this character-driven and highly cinematic documentary, acclaimed filmmakers Nicole Newnham (The Rape of Europa, Sentenced Home) and Maren Grainger-Monsen (Worlds Apart, The Vanishing Line) reveal Ganguly’s critical work in a Calcutta slum neighborhood. Filmed over the course of three and a half years, The Revolutionary Optimists, airing Monday, June 17, 2013 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV, follows Amlan and three of the children he works with through adolescence as they challenge the idea that marginalization is written into their destiny.