Maestra (film)

Maestra is a 33-minute documentary film directed by Catherine Murphy, about the youngest women teachers of the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign.

Maestra
Film poster
Directed by	Catherine Murphy
Written by	Eve Goldberg
Produced by	Catherine Murphy
Starring	Alice Walker Diana Balboa Norma Guillard
Distributed by	Women Make Movies
Release date	April 6, 2011 (2011-04-06) (La Pena Cultural Center) [1]
Running time	33 minutes
Country	Cuba
Languages	English, Spanish

In 1961, Cuba aimed to eradicate illiteracy in one year. It sent 250,000 volunteers across the island to teach reading and writing in rural communities for one year. 100,000 of the volunteers were under 18 and more than half of them were women.

In 2004, Murphy discovered that she knew several women in Havana who had volunteered for the project; they were in their 60s. Murphy was due to return to the United States, but before doing so, she decided to record three interviews with former Literacy Campaign volunteers. From 2004 to 2010, Murphy continued to track down stories of Literacy Campaign volunteers and the families that hosted them, eventually producing and directing Maestra and founding The Literacy Project.^[2]

The film is narrated in English by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alice Walker and features Spanish-language interviews (with English subtitles) with nine of the women who taught in the Campaign.^[3] Maestra features interviews with Norma Guillard, one of the first Cuban women to call herself a feminist, and Diana Balboa, one of the first open members of Cuba's LGBT community and an international advocate for gay and lesbian rights. Both were 15 years old at the time of the campaign.^[4]