In the 25-minute film, the singer-songwriter recounts the anecdotes he cherished at age 14, when he joined the youth brigades of the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign and taught a peasant family to read and write.
The film, a 2020 co-production between the United States and Cuba by Maestra Productions, the Martin Luther King Memorial Center, and La Rueda Films, was directed by Catherine Murphy, with cinematography by Roberto Chile, and music composed by Aldo Lopez-Gavilan and Rodriguez himself.
The National Literacy Campaign carried out in the Caribbean nation is considered the most significant event in Cuban culture and education in the 20th century following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
Its impact, as recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), set a benchmark as a mass cultural and educational movement for popular educators in Latin America during the 1960s and 70s and marked the beginning of a school of literacy.
UNESCO further explained that the campaign contributed a new conception of how to teach literacy through mass action, which has influenced popular education movements in various countries that use it as a pedagogical and didactic reference.
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