Dates/times:
Thursday, May 30 2013 at 07:00 PM (Get Tickets)
Location:
The Madison Theater
1036 Madison Avenue
Albany, NY 12206
United States
Event Description:
"The Revolutionary Optimists"
Screening: 7pm, May 30th, at the Madison Theater in Albany Sponsored by Image Quilt Productions, The Madison, and ITVS Community Cinema.
Synopsis: 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.
The Filmmakers: Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen
Discussion to follow moderated by Kamaraj Kalyanasundaram.
About the Discussion Leader:
Kamaraj Kalyanasundaram, lived most of his childhood in a South Indian village, whose name is not known to most people in the world.
Meadows, Streams, Occasional Rain that pours as if the sky is torn, scorching sun on summer days, soothing moon cool nights and many other wonders of country living characterize the dreamy part of his personality. Kamaraj grew up in hard financial circumstances, the presence of minimal facilities, constant reminders to earn his life, and heartfelt sacrifices by family members. He was educated in an English medium school, where he had a few honest teachers who cared very much about the kind of person he would become.
Kamaraj is an independent consultant, specializing in human potential, with rich experience of different cultures, in his 16 year career. He also writes poetry in English and Tamil, his mother tongue. He admires men and women of character and is proud to present "The Revolutionary Optimists".
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