North Cape May resident and filmmaker Chad Shagren returned from India where he was shooting his new documentary.
Shagren, who left India just days before the November terrorist attacks, has made a film that will endeavor to show the dangers in the cities of India for children who migrate there from the impoverished rural outlands.
“Agents of exploitation stand on the train platforms of the major cities waiting for their prey,” said Shagren. “Gang leaders, drug dealers, pimps are all waiting for children from the lowest level of the caste system to arrive.”
The intention of his new documentary is to show the conditions in rural India, of a system that can only show younger people generations of hard labor, alcoholism, and child abuse, with no way out.
“These kids see their fathers working in the fields, abusing alcohol, and they receive unrelenting abuse,” he said. “And this lifestyle is repeating itself generation after generation.”
Leaving the rural areas for what they think is a better opportunity in the city, Shagren reported, they wind up in sweatshops and red light districts, and many become the victims and perpetrators of crimes and drug abuse.
The film is tentatively called, “The Nowhere Children,” based on an article of the same name from a local reporter who served as a guide for the film crew.
Shagren observed that everything seemed normal on the surface while he was there, but he knew there was unrest.
“We knew of bombs going off just weeks before we got there,” he said, “and we even commented that all it would take to ruin the country is a public attack on Europeans and Americans. We all agreed that would destroy tourism, a major revenue base for their economy.”
Shagren’s’ first documentary, “Flying Kites,” screened at the Lower Township Performing Arts Center Dec. 9. The film has been entered into the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and its focus is on the struggle and determination of orphans in Kenya, Africa.
Shagren, a graduate of Long Island University where he majored in film, is a former student of the Cape May Film Society’s summer program.
The Cape May Film Society hosts the Cape May Film Festival, which is New Jersey’s premiere film festival dedicated to the support and presentation of creative, challenging, groundbreaking, film/video works by New Jersey filmmakers.
