The Revolutionary Optimists

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Free screening of "The Revolutionary Optimists."
brought to you by Community Cinema | Rocky Mountain PBS | ITVS
Community Cinema is a groundbreaking public education and civic engagement initiative featuring free monthly screenings of films from the Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens.

Movie Website: http://revolutionaryoptimists.org/
RSVP at http://member.rmpbs.org/LP=95

5/13 at 7:00pm - Montrose - Regional Public Library
5/15 at 5:30pm - Durango - Discovery Museum
5/15 at 6:00pm - Telluride - Wilkinson Public Library
5/15 at 7:00pm - Grand Junction - CMU
5/16 at 7:00pm - Mancos - Public Library
5/18 at 12:0pm - Pueblo - Rawlings Public Library
5/19 at 2:00pm - Denver - Sie Denver Film Center
5/20 at 6:30pm - Steamboat - Bud Werner Memorial Library

The Filmmakers:
Nicole Newnham - Co-Director
Maren Grainger-Monsen - Co-Director
Marco D'Ambrosio, Composer
Andrew Gersh, Editor

Amlan Ganguly empowers children to become activists and educators, with powerful results. The Revolutionary Optimists follows him as he attempts to replicate his work in the brick fields outside the city, where children live and work in unimaginable conditions.

Using street theater, puppetry, and dance as their weapons, the children in Calcutta's slums have cut their neighborhoods' malaria and diarrhea rates in half, and turned former garbage dumps into playing fields. Now, pushing at the limits of optimism, Amlan is attempting to take his work into the brickfields outside Calcutta, where spend their days making and carrying bricks using methods unchanged by centuries.

The Revolutionary Optimists proposes a workable solution to intractable problems associated with poverty, including preventable diseases and ineffectual governance. Ganguly's story suggests that education and child empowerment are crucial keys to lifting entire societies out of hopelessness.

Websites:
http://www.rmpbs.org/cinema
http://communitycinema.org/

NOTE: Independent Television Service (ITVS), the co-presenter of Independent Lens, presents Community Cinema, a free monthly screening series, offered in over 90 cities throughout the U.S. For schedule visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/getinvolved/cinema/