Join us for an insightful look into contemporary Cuba.  Three filmmakers capture the stories of teachers, cigar-factory workers, and taxi-drivers from urban Havana to rural Baracoa – inspiring, controversial, and uniquely Cuba!

Maestra 'The Teacher' highlights how thousands of young women taught nearly a million kids to read and write in a year

CON EL TOQUE DE LA CHAVETA:  28-min, documentary, directed by Pamela Sporn In the cigar factories of Cuba, a unique tradition persists: ‘ la lectura de tabaqueria’ . Every day, specially employed workers read out loud to the two or three-hundred  tabaqueros as they sit rolling the country’s famous cigars. From classic novels to national politics and local baseball results, for centuries this daily tradition has been an education for the workers, or  chavetas. But after years of listening, they are now knowledgeable and demanding, and the readers must be at their very best if they are to keep their discerning audience interested.

MAESTRA (THE TEACHER):  33-min, documentary, directed by Catherine Murphy, 2011 In 1961 Cuba 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.  The  Bay of Pigs invasion took place in Cuba impacting the both the women and the literacy campaign.  The young women who went out to teach literacy in the rural communities across the island found themselves deeply transformed in the process. This documentary includes present day interviews with women who volunteered to teach their country to read in 1961 along with archival footage and still photos from the 60’s.   Catherine Murphy has begun the recording of an oral history of one of contemporary Cuba’s greatest achievements.