The Teacher

Cast

Producers: The Literacy Project, Tres Musas Producciones.

Synopsis

The Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 dramatically changed the nation’s literacy levels within one year by organizing over 250,000 volunteers. More than half of them were women. Many were under 18 years old. They lived with their students for up to one year, teaching classes in the rural mountains and urban shantytowns across the island. They taught their nation how to read and write while being profoundly transformed in the process.

Awards

• Festival of New Latin American Cinema. Habana. Cuba.
• TransAfrica-AFI Caribbean Film Festival, Washington DC.
• Ananse African Diaspora Film Festival in Cali, Colombia.

Director's Bio

Catherine Murphy has produced various social documentaries including Saul Landau’s Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up? and Eugene Corr\'s From Ghost Town to Havana. Murphy served as senior staff producer at the TeleSur TV Washington bureau in 2006 and has produced content for PBS and Avila TV. While in Caracas in 2009, she founded Tres Musas Producciones, a collaborative production house of independent women producers working in film, music and literature. MAESTRA is her directing debut.