[van-announce] Mexican teachers movement film

[LaSurda]

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Sandborn [mailto:tos at infinet.net] 
Subject: [coalofcoal-l] Mexican teachers movement film



----- Original Message ----- 
From: Larry Kuehn 
To: Tom Sandborn 
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 2:50 PM
Subject: Mexican teachers movement film


*Please distribute to interested contacts


Granito de Arena.

A film about the Mexican teachers struggle

Tuesday, August 23, 2005
8 p.m.
Free

Isobel MacInness Room at Gage Towers
University of British Columbia campus


For over 20 years, global economic forces have been dismantling public
education in Mexico, but always in the constant shadow of popular
resistance. Granito de Arena is the story of that resistance  the story
of hundreds of thousands of public schoolteachers whose grassroots,
non-violent movement took Mexico by surprise, and who have endured
brutal repression in their 25-year struggle to defend public education.

Featuring...
Interviews with
Eduardo Galeano and Maude Barlow

Music by 
DJ Food, Los Mocosos, Slowrider, PlanB, Correo Aereo, Grupo Mono Blanco.


Important...disturbing...a film that views education from below, from
the classroom and the community, from the rank-and-file and the
grassroots of both rural and urban Mexico. All of those concerned about
education, human rights, labor unions, Latin America and globalization
will want to see this inspiring film. Mexican Labor News and Analysis 

Award-winning filmmaker, Jill Freidberg (This is What Democracy Looks
Like, 2000), spent two years in southern Mexico documenting the efforts
of over 100,000 teachers, parents, and students fighting to defend the
country's public education system. Freidberg combines footage of strikes
and direct actions with 25 years worth of never-before-seen archival
images to deliver a compelling, and sometimes unsettling, story of
resistance, repression, commitment, and solidarity. Interviews with
internationally-recognized figures, such as Eduardo Galeano and Maude
Barlow, place the Mexican teachers' struggle in a global context,
clearly spelling out the relationship between economic globalization and
the worldwide public education crisis. 
.
A sixty-minute documentary, Granito de Arena presents concrete examples
of what the Mexican teachers are up against by capturing the desperate
conditions facing teachers and students in the schools and communities
of southern Mexico. Featuring a driving soundtrack by DJ Food,
Slowrider, PlanB, and Los Mosocos, Granito de Arena fuels indignation,
inspires action, and raises important questions about democracy,
sovereignty, and the universal right to public education. 

'"The fact that we are in the streets, denouncing the privatization of
public education, denouncing what is happening in this country.that is
part of our struggle, because we are teachers, and we cannot be
silenced."
Alejandro Leal, Secretary-General, Local 22 Oaxaca, National Union of
Education Workers 


Sponsored by the BCTF International Solidarity Program