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Marquee Doc, Festival Of Light, Ancient Music: Your Weekend's Here!

From a documentary to a festival of light to very old music in a very old place--the weekend is here.  First off, Saturday night  head to the Mission Marquee Plaza for a revealing and free documentary.

"A Class Apart--A Mexican-American Civil Rights Story." San Antonio is connected to this story.

City Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran says, "Because we just finished celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month and we just finished Dia De Los Muertos we wanted to be sure to continue the celebration and tell the story of the civil rights struggle."

She says that struggle has a special resonance as the election draws near.

Also, on Saturday at La Villita: Diwali San Antonio Festival of Light.

"Light is symbolic of knowledge, of good," Viagran says.

Kausi Subramanian is president of Anuja, San Antonio, the group that puts on the festival. The festival's web site has a compilation of all the events, but here's an overview.

"The event starts at 5 .m. at the Arneson River Theatre."

Live singing from San Antonio student Aamuktha Karla, followed by dancers from four different city dance schools.

"After that we will have a Bollywood Bhangra piece that will be performed, and there will be audience participation," Subramanian says.

A brand new States of India River Parade, a ceremonial lighting of thousands of candles on the river, followed by fireworks. Then on Sunday, here's something different.

"We play music from the 17th and 18th century on copies of musical instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries," says the Austin Baroque Orchestra's Billy Traylor. They're playing at Mission Concepcion.

"It's the perfect venue for early Latin-American music.  Now that it's a Unesco World Heritage site it's even more special," Traylor says.

Get there early for the 4 p.m. performance and find out more about the instruments and history of the music. Lots to do this weekend!

Find more on the documentary at the Mission Marquee Plaza here.

Find more on Diwali San Antonio Festival of Lights here.

Find more on the Austin Baroque Orchestra here

A trailer for "A Class Apart" follows.

Jack Morgan can be reached at jack@tpr.org and on Twitter at @JackMorganii