|
THROUGH A CLEAR LENS FINAL REPORT PAGE 2 My name is Venus Soberanes. I was one of the young filmmakers of "Through a Clear Lens", and I would like to share some of the experiences and insights I had while I participated in this project. During the making of this project I learned the necessary technical and practical skills to make a documentary. Through a series of workshops with professional documentary filmmakers such as Nettie Wild, I learned the theory of documentary, and by actually going to the streets and filming people and situations, I learned the practical side of documentary making. In the nights and hours I spent people-watching, I had the chance to reflect on my experiences as a landed immigrant integrating myself into a different culture and society. I also had the opportunity to learn more about the culture I am living in by looking at it from a detached perspective. And in being a conscious witness, I witnessed a part of reality which is usually overlooked. Coming from a different country where police corruption and violence are expressed openly, I had strong feelings of anger and helplessness for there is not much that can be done about such behaviors without dangerously exposing oneself. By participating in this project my purposeless feelings of anger and helplessness were transformed into a practical activism, and this allowed me to feel useful to society by sharing my experiences as a witness of social unfairness and discrimination. I strongly believe that exposing the injustice that I have observed allows and even forces social change, for doing so creates a larger community of witnesses of those sorts of situations that otherwise would remain hidden and unnoticed. I enjoyed the project a lot. Even though it was very hard to be an immobile spectator at times, I believe that the visual information we gathered in the process of this project is a powerful tool that will promote social change to happen. Venus Soberanes
|