My Students’ Film Assignments

Alfredo Fernández               

HAVANA TIMES — Since last September, I’ve been experiencing contradictory emotions. I teach four different subjects at a private university in Ecuador. I teach so many courses because the owners of the university hire very few professors in order to save money. This has its toll on the learning process. To make matters worse, the education my students had prior to university was rather peculiar, if not downright bad.

That said, talent still comes to the fore and gold nuggets twinkle in the trash. In the audiovisual and graphic production course I teach, I asked my students to put together an educational spot on a subject of their choosing as an assignment.

Below are the links to their spots, so that Havana Times readers can assess the quality of my students’ work for themselves. As you watch these, please bear in mind this is the first time my students take on a serious film assignment, that they have no previous training and that they have seen very few good films.

Alfredo Fernandez

Alfredo Fernandez: I didn't really leave Cuba, it's impossible to leave somewhere that you've never been. After gravitating for 37 years on that strange island, I managed to touch firm ground, but only to confirm that I hadn't reached anywhere. Perhaps I will never belong anywhere. Now I'm living in Ecuador, but please, don't believe me when I say where I am, better to find me in "the Cuba of my dreams.