"Cruzada" Catherine Murphy's New Film Project Telling the Story of the Nicaraguan National Literacy Campaign
Catherine Murphy formerly worked for Food First and was very active
in reporting on Cuba's sustainable agriculture movement in the 1990’s
and beyond. She is also an Advisory Board Member for the Kansas Chapter
fo Family Farm Defenders which is the nonprofit home for this facebook
and beyond project lifting up the work of the Cuban Sustainable
Agriculture Movement. Murphy says that "Cruzada" aims to be a non-partisan film. "We will look deeply and honestly at the National Literacy Campaign and the surrounding political context through the eyes of the people and communities who participated. It will focus on the grassroots level of the campaign: examining the thought experiment of a just education that it represented and the very real opportunities that it gave to the teachers and students who participated. But it will also touch on the legacy of these times: asking what happened not only to those who participated, but to the ideals of education in the years to come, as the nation fell into years of war and reconstruction."
In 2017, the CRUZADA team will travel to Nicaragua to meet the inspiring generation of teachers and students who participated in this campaign and learn about the impact it had on their lives. These teachers, now in their fifties and sixties, and their students, will guide this journey as they rediscover their past and tell their stories. These interviews, accompanied by archival footage, photos, original artwork and journal entries will draw Murphy and her team into the past to experience how an entire country stopped everything to teach people to read.
While it is a historical documentary, CRUZADA's story could not be more timely, as discussions about women's education echo across the globe and activists in the United States fight de-facto school segregation and public school closures. CRUZADA will document the grassroots efforts of 1980s Nicaragua, but it will highlight education as human right and a political act to create a better society. It will examine the real benefits of putting this idealism into practice, as well as the complicated legacy that followed. Murphy and her team will work with educational institutions, organizations and activists to turn this film into a tool for discussing the political importance of global literacy, equal, quality education as a human right, and the power that we feel as individuals when we teach.
A film for educators, education activists, and anyone who has an interest in Central America, CRUZADA will guide you through an inspirational journey with the people, teachers and students alike, who shaped their nation through reading.https://www.facebook.com/cruzadafilm/
BIO - Director
Catherine Murphy: Director, Print Shipper, Producer, Submission Contact Catherine Murphy is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who has spent much of the last 20 years working in Latin America. Murphy lived and worked in Cuba in the 1990’s, earning a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Havana. Currently, Murphy is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs and founder/director of The Literacy Project. The Literacy Project is non-profit multi-media project devoted to the topic of adult literacy in the Americas, founded by Murphy in response to the magnitude of adult illiteracy in North and South America. Since 2003, The Literacy Project has focused on researching and recording oral histories of volunteer teachers from the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign, to date the most ambitious and successful national effort to eradicate illiteracy. This phase of The Literacy Project has culminated in the production the documentary film, MAESTRA. Catherine Murphy, along with one of the cast members of the film, Norma Guillard, take on speaking engagements, touring with clips of the film, and addressing issues of literacy in cultural, academic and political forums. MAESTRA also had a web-based oral history archive in the works. Eduardo Galeano, in his recent book Espejos, features four short stories based on the interviews from Cuba. As an independent film professional, Murphy’s work has largely focused on social documentaries as a producer, translator, subtitle supervisor and associate producer. Her film credits include: “Gay Cuba”, “The Greening of Cuba”, “Venezuela Rising”, “Stealing America” (dir. Dorothy Fadiman), “Out” and “Refusenicks” (dir. Sonja de Vries). She is the associate producer on “Ghost Town to Havana” (dir. Eugene Corr) and “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up” (dir. Saul Landau). Murphy recently served as the archival researcher for Susanne Rostock’s biography of Harry Belafonte, “Sing Your Song”. Over the past decade, Murphy’s work in Cuba has included the design and execution of dozens of academic and cultural exchange programs for US-based universities, non-profit and cultural institutions. Most recently, she was advisor to the Cuba Residency for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. In 2006, Murphy served as senior producer at the TeleSur TV Washington DC Bureau, and has produced content for Pacifica Radio National, TeleSur TV, Avila TV and WBAI. In 2009, while working and living in Caracas, Murphy founded Tres Musas Producciones, a collaborative production house of independent women producers working together in film, music and literature. Currently, Catherine Murphy is devoting 100% of her time to MAESTRA and The Literacy
Cruzada: A Literacy Project Film
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'Alfabetizar!!'
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