See it at the Angelika
Houston filmaker exposes The Cartel of education
What's the biggest problem facing our nation today? It's not global warming.
It's our severely flawed educational system, says filmmaker and documentarian Bob Bowdon, whose first film, The Cartel, debuts tonight at the Angelika.
The Houston native — he graduated from Cypress Creek High School — abandoned engineering at he age of 27 to pursue a career in filmmaking. After spending some time as a journalist and reporting on a number of stories about education, Bowdon found himself compelled to expose corruption in public education when his good friend took a job teaching at an inner-city urban high school.
"I started hearing her stories on a daily basis, about how little freedom she had in terms of curriculum, and I thought to myself, 'I don't think a lot of people know this stuff. ' "
Cartel uncovers where the funding for public education is spent (it's not on teacher salaries, says Bowdon) and reveals the collection of self-serving bureaucratic agencies working against reform.
The film premieres tonight at the Angelika with showtimes at at 5:25 p.m., 7:25 p.m. and 9:25 p.m and runs for the next week.