Popular actor Kamal Haasan's movie Mahanadhi has a storyline based on the area. The Malayalam movie Calcutta News also deals with the issue of prostitution in Sonagachi.
The Sonargachi project is a sex workers' cooperative that operates in the area and empowers sex workers to insist on condom use and to stand up against abuse. It was founded by public health scientist Smarajit Jana in 1992 but is now largely run by the prostitutes themselves. While some are crediting DMSC with keeping a relalively low rate of HIV infection among prostitutes in Sonagachi -- 5.17% of the 13,000 prostitutes in Sonagachi are estimated to be HIV positive -- this HIV rate is in fact no different than the average HIV rate for female prostitutes in India, which is estimated to be 5.1% (the HIV rate infection among prostitutes as well as among the general population varies widely by region in India).
In his documentary The Five Obstructions, renowned Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier asks poet and experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth to name the worst place in the world he's ever visited, and immediately Leth responds with "The Red Light District of Calcutta."
Sonagachi is the largest red-light district in Kolkata, India and one of the largest in Asia. It is an area with several hundred multi-story brothels and some 10,000 sex workers. Sonagachi is located in North-Kolkata near the intersection of Chittaranjan Avenue Shobha Bazar and Beadon Street, just north of the Marble Palace.
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