Every week, the 13 students would retreat from the streets of Madrid, sit in the quiet of their bedrooms and begin speaking to their phone cameras. Over the course of last Fall Term, the students in the Off-Campus Studies (OCS) program “Experiencing Spain: Ecology, Economy, and Socio-Political Transitions” documented their reflections and experiences. This footage was incorporated into a 53-minute bilingual film titled “Más allá del viaje / The Journey Within.”
The film will be shown on Monday, April 20 at 7:00-9:00 p.m. in the Weitz Cinema. It will be followed by a Q&A with the directors, who are also the students featured.
“As part of this OCS program, I integrated participatory video as a central pedagogical tool,” said Spanish professor Palmar Àlvarez-Blanco, who is the director of the OCS program and co-director of the film. “I have previously taught courses in participatory video, as it fosters critical viewing practices and encourages students to engage deeply with questions of representation, voice and perspective.”
The film was collaboratively directed by Natalie Berman-Schneider ’27, Carter Bryant ’27, Charlie Cullen ’27, Norah Dillner ’27, Nathan Hawkins ’27, Elsie Newburg ’27, Samantha Rodriguez ’28, Ava Su-Jheong Roh ’27, Madeleine Silknitter ’27, Will Tan ’27, Ethan Warren ’26, Hailey Westrup ’27 and Cordelia Whitman ’27, in addition to Álvarez-Blanco.
Filmmakers and leaders of the Laboratorio de Antropología Audiovisual (LAAV) Chus Dominguez and Belén Sola also collaborated on and directed the film. When the students arrived in Spain, Dominguez and Sola told them to begin recording weekly diaries.
“When we started out, we didn’t really know what was expected of us,” said Hawkins. “I remember I was walking down the streets in Spain, and I’d go to a cafe and just [record in my video diary] ‘Oh, I ordered a coffee in Spanish, how exciting.’ But pretty quickly, it became clear that they wanted more intimate, more personal stories. So we started filming in our bedrooms, in a quieter space. We would talk about our emotional reactions to things like being away from home and being in a very new environment.”
The students had to share their video diaries with each other while they were on the program, a level of vulnerability that was challenging for some.
“It was hard at times because I’m not a very vulnerable person, especially in front of the camera,” said Rodriguez. “It was a nice challenge to step out of my comfort zone.”
When rewatching the videos at the end of the program, students witnessed their personal transformations from a new perspective.
“You can tell from the beginning to the end, how much all of our Spanish improved, and just how our confidence grew. In the beginning, we’re all a little awkward, and there’s a lot of ‘ums’ and ‘likes,’ and then towards the end, we’re very fluid and confident,” said Newburg.
Berman-Schneider agreed. “When the program started, we noticed that our video [diaries] tended to have a little less substance to them, because we just weren’t as comfortable speaking in Spanish, and being comfortable in front of the camera and discussing deep thoughts. As the program went on, we were able to reflect more and open up, and we started to share these transformative memories,” she said.
In addition to the weekly diaries, the film also integrates footage students took from their daily life abroad and group trips outside Madrid.
“So on every trip [outside Madrid,] we had a small group of students who were in charge of documenting that trip and getting all the content. [Dominguez and Sola] gave us professional videocameras, and we had some little microphones to get audio clips, and an ambiance sound recorder,” said Newburg. “They taught us how to use them, but then were just kind of like, ‘Okay, go for it,’ because they wanted to get it from our perspective.”
Students also took footage of their daily lives in Madrid using their cell phones.
“[I became] so much more perceptive of our day-to-day routines, like even taking the bus or just walking through campus,” said Hawkins. “Suddenly, that’s something we should be recording, maybe to include in this movie. It gives you a different perspective on rudimentary life.”
By the end of their program, the students had amassed more than a hundred hours of video.
“It was much harder to get rid of the material than actually get the material in the first place,” said Berman-Schneider, speaking on the editing process.
“We really had to think carefully about what we wanted to convey and what was most meaningful out of this really intense experience. We would spend probably three or four hours a week towards the end of the program, working in small groups, going through the videos we had recorded and just selecting the ones that we thought were most relevant,” said Hawkins.
The group ended their OCS program with a rough draft completed, then passed it on to Dominguez and Sola to finish cutting and refining the film.
“I think it’s nice to actually look back at something. It’s an actual memory that I can have — you know, you have your own memories in your head, but it’s actually something physical that I can always watch back and be like, ‘Oh yeah, that was my time in Spain,’” said Rodriguez.
This exercise of memory-making was Àlvarez-Blanco’s intention. “Given that the course examined the construction of a nation’s official history, the process of imagining and producing a collective narrative became a hands-on methodological exercise — allowing students to engage directly with the macro-level questions we were exploring in theory,” she said.
The presentation in the Weitz will be the first time the film is shown to a public audience.
“I think a lot of our experiences are broadly relevant. I’m sure a lot of people who have gone on OCS in general can relate to a lot of what we went through, but even if you’re still thinking about going on OCS or you’re not sure you really want to, I hope this will help people consider that, and see some of the really beautiful things that come out of it,” said Hawkins.