Swedish documentary filmmaker Anna Fischer swung into the Wood River Valley recently to collect her "significant other," Steve Goodman, a Lakota Sioux, of Bellevue before heading back to Varanasi-India where she lives. They are on a mission to document and hopefully help the many thousands of homeless children who live on trains and in the train stations.
Last weekend Fischer held a fundraising trunk show of hand-embroidered silk jackets and scarves from Kashmir at the Riverbend Coffeehouse in Bellevue. Proceeds will help finance a new film, which has a working title of "Bacha Express." Fischer started the film about a year ago. Dimitri Athos, a high school friend in New York City, is editing the footage.
Fischer is also a social worker who attends to women in the burn ward in a Varanasi hospital. Though bride burning is illegal in India, there are close to 15,000 dowry deaths estimated per year. The victims are "women who get burned for dowries," Fischer said. A young bride is at the mercy of her husband and his family, who may demand more dowry money, and cause her to have a kitchen fire "accident" if none is forthcoming.
It is no surprise then that Fischer decided to find a more "upbeat" project.
"These are cool little kids, ages 3 to about 18, who live on the trains or in one of the 7,000 railway stations in India," she said. "I want to follow and live with these kids and build awareness about building train station schools and health clinics."
UNICEF says there are 11 million child runaways in India. Travelling on the extensive India railway system, they rarely stay in one place for long.
Fischer says the children end up joining gangs and dying young. The terrain is not the safest, but Gooodman's presence will be helpful. Nonetheless, Fischer is prepared.
"This is my country," she said. "I speak the language (Hindi). I dress appropriately. Now I'm taking this Native American Indian to India."
Fischer also works with a small travel company called Heaven on Earth Tours & Travels in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and India.
For more information and to make a tax-deductible donation to the project, people can contact Athos at dimitriathlos@gmail.com. To order the Kashmiri products visit eternalknots.com.
Anna Fischer wears one of the Kashmir coats whose sale helps finance a documentary on homeless "railway" children in India.
Photo by David N. Seelig
