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Maestra
Shorts - Documentaries 1
Old Town Playhouse
Wed, Aug 1, 2012 6:00 PM
With a strong sense of the personal side of social change, this triptych of moving documentaries charts the efforts of brave citizens who fight to change their homes for the better. “After the Factory” examines the effects of the global economic crisis with a comparison of fallen industrial strongholds Detroit and Lodz, Poland; “My Neighborhood” follows a Palestinian teenager who forms an unlikely friendship with Israeli activists; and “Maestra” pays tribute to the thousands of young women in Cuba in the 1960s who volunteered to combat illiteracy in the country, with astonishing results.
Cuba, 1961: 250,000 volunteers taught 700,000 people to read and write in one year. 100,000 of the teachers were under 18 years old. Over half were women. "Maestra" explores this story through the personal testimonies of the young women who went out to teach literacy in rural communities across the island—and found themselves deeply transformed in the process.
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