On an articles published on The New York Times, Michael Kleinman talks about his video produced for Op-Docs [1] titled “Wiring the Amazon”, where he shares the four-year struggle to get a remote Peruvian village connected with the outside world [2]:
I was following the work of One Laptop per Child [3] (O.L.P.C.), a United States-based nonprofit that has designed inexpensive laptops for primary education. The organization is particularly active in Peru, where the government has purchased and distributed hundreds of thousands of O.L.P.C.'s laptops to its poorest communities. One such village is Palestina, deep in the Amazon rain forest. It has only 65 people.
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I spent three months over the course of a year in Palestina. During that time, I documented the approximately two dozen laptops given to the primary school students, as well as a solar-powered satellite dish that provided wireless Internet access to the village. While there was no formal electrical grid in Palestina, most households had small car batteries charged by solar panels. At night, the schoolchildren charged their computers using these batteries..
Op-Docs is the editorial department’s section for short, opinionated documentaries, produced by independent filmmakers and artists with wide creative latitude, covering current affairs, contemporary life and historical subjects.