In the Desde Aquí: Window Into Your Heart – Videomaking class you will learn the theory and history of different identities as well as video production techniques (including photography and editing). We’ll then discuss the stories you want to tell and the impact they might have on yourself and the audience. This is a video-making class but, most importantly, a window into your own heart.
Our stories, from those of our ancestors to our current communities, explain and justify who we are, and help us connect with others. Telling stories is not only fun but also contains healing powers; it has an alchemy worth understanding that works for the storyteller, as well as for the audience.
As a storyteller, we understand our story better when we express our stories from our experiences, memories, reflection, identity, and what we believe we are. Through the act of telling our story, we connect with others and cancel out any sense of isolation or loneliness.
As the audience, when we witness the narrative of someone’s life, it can be not only entertaining and fun, but also cathartic (if we identify with aspects of the story). It can help us process emotions and see ourselves on the screen but with enough distance to see a different perspective of an issue.
Desde Aquí: Window Into Your Heart – Videomaking class can help heal the complicated stories we tell about ourselves, and by sharing them with the world we can challenge mainstream notions or preconceptions about disability.
Telling a personal story, particularly one that is complicated, has been proven to help process difficult emotions. This can create an opportunity to build a new story about who we are.
Rooted in the exploration of identity through videomaking, neurodivergent/disabled students (who are willing to explore and question the disability identity) will learn how to produce a film and use filmmaking narrative skills to challenge and reset their mindset.
I have developed my style of personal storytelling, I call it: Desde Aquí: Window Into Your Heart. With “Desde Aquí” (From Right Here) I am referring to the place where it all comes from: your heart.