As a teenager in her hometown of Paraty, Brazil, Pauline Batista \u201916 MA was enrolled in a rigorous five-year teacher- training high school and held multiple paid internships. \u201cIt was very hectic because I would leave my house at 7 in the morning and come back at 10 at night,\u201d Batista says. \u201cYour average 15-year-old is not dealing with all that. But for me, that was normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t slow down in the summers, working for Festa Liter\u00e1ria Internacional de Paraty (Flip), the largest literary festival in Brazil. Her work as program coordinator of youth-oriented FlipZona included media and filmmaking programs and inspired her early interest in filmmaking. At Mitchell College in New London, Connecticut, she focused on video production, but after graduation, she says, \u201cI started to get really critical of the relationships between what we call people from the North and people from the South\u201d \u2014 those regions of the world that have more and, respectively, less wealth and power. After earning a master\u2019s degree in Latin American studies at UConn, she decided to return to Brazil for a year while deciding what to pursue next.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go back home after all those years and, after participating in this literature festival since 2002, for 14 years, every summer,\u201d she says, \u201cI learned that the media program was going to be entirely cut. I was enraged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Batista ended up in a meeting with the secretary of education for Paraty, whom she effectively lobbied for the refunding of the program \u2014 a success she attributes to the critical thinking she learned at UConn. \u201cI was exposed to the right body of work and literature,\u201d she says. \u201cThe conversation shifts because I could shift the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n