Film pedagogy for a new Bolivia

(2017, 18:37 minutes)

On a road trip with young film educators from Teatro Trono*. The film educators have been tasked with teaching the country’s teacher training colleges how to use film so that the new generations of teachers can use cameras and film when teaching in schools.

Film educators experience many obstacles along the way, but also an openness to the fact that the teachers of the future must be able to do something completely different.

Reforms to the school system began when MAS (Movement for Socialism) took power in Bolivia in 2006 and passed Law No. 070 in 2010 to revolutionize education by developing pedagogy that respects indigenous cultures and languages, liberating and democratizing communities and citizens. But radically changing a country’s education system is as difficult as turning a supertanker, and most teachers lack the pedagogical tools to deliver the reform.

With support from CISU, Spor Media collaborated with Teatro Trono from 2011 to 2017 on the Miradas projects, creating teaching materials for the country’s teacher training colleges and showing how film can be used to make teaching more participatory.

*Teatro Trono is a cultural project for children and young people in Bolivia’s second largest city El Alto in the highlands near the government city La Paz. El Alto is mainly inhabited by Bolivia’s indigenous population, who have moved here from rural areas and former mining towns. Spor Media and Teatro Trono have collaborated since 2004 on several activities including Global Kids visits, Miradas Juveniles, Una vida sin violencia and Global Stay Tours.