‘Slumdog’ Filmmakers Donate to Youth Charity

By Dave Itzkoff

April 16, 2009

The team behind the film “Slumdog Millionaire” said that it would make a donation to Plan, an international charity that focuses on children’s development in India and elsewhere. In a news release, the “Slumdog” filmmakers, including the director Danny Boyle and the producer Christian Colson, said that they had pledged about $745,000 to a five-year program intended to improve the lives of children in the slums of Mumbai, where the movie takes place. Following the release of “Slumdog Millionaire,” its creative team was criticized for exploiting the child actors they had recruited from Mumbai; the filmmakers said the actors had been tutored and paid three times the average Indian adult’s salary while working on the film.

Source: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com