La Maestra (The Teacher)

Streaming video - 2015

A film about a young Mexican woman who decides to pursue her dreams, and in doing so, changes her community in her own small way. The film profiles a day in the life of Mayra Aguilar, a teacher in a tiny rural fishing village in Baja, Mexico, who becomes the first Mexican woman surfer in her area. The film depicts the beauty and slow pace of life in the village, as well as some of the issues facing the community, while also discussing how Mayra has gone on to inspire both her students and other local women to take up surfing and follow their own path. ..Through her deep connection to the ocean, Mayra has also become an environmentalist, teaching her students the importance of land and sea stewardship through hands on learning. In the film, ...Mayra talks about the amazing surfing waves in her town -- a gift of nature that has brought thousands of gringo surfers to the area over the years, forever changing Mayra's hometown in both positive and negative ways. In this regard, the film is also a subtle commentary on the impact outsider surf tourists can have on small communities around the globe and the need for all of us to be mindful of taking care of the environment, no matter where we are. ..Surf movies are filmed all over the world, but usually it’s Americans, Australians, and/or Europeans traveling to exotic locals and talking about what they are seeing, and it’s rare that the filmmakers bother to interview the local people who are born and raised in these locations or capture their daily experiences of living and surfing there year-round. La Maestra (The Teacher) is unique in that it’s a story about a local woman, told entirely in Spanish, through our character’s own voice, not the voices of outsiders. Our cameras follow Mayra throughout her day, giving viewers a rare glimpse into the life of this young Mexican teacher and surfer who was born and continues to live and work in her tiny, remote village...La Maestra is a great classroom film for prompting thoughtful discussions of globalization, gender, the body, and North/South cultural geographies. With gorgeous production values, and located across traditions of surf cinema, Third Cinema, and feminist documentary experiments with ways of looking and seeing, La Maestra opens audiences to a story about desire, modernity, aspiration, and liberation..-Krista Comer, Professor of English & Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender & Sexuality, Rice University, Texas..I recently had the opportunity to use the film La Maestra in my college course, Surfing and the Politics of Race, Class and Gender, and this documentary receives my strongest endorsement as an educator. The film brilliantly captures life in a typical rural Mexican village filled with families enjoying local celebrations and working in the local economy...not the violent and corrupt Mexico that Americans have come to know from the evening news, and the (students) appreciated seeing a film about a Mexican female surfer rather than a film featuring scantily clad women and corporate logos. .-Adrian D. Pantoja, Ph.D. Professor of Politics and Chicano Studies, Pitzer College, CA more