I am a newspaper journalist by profession here in Salamanca for nine years already but I have long craved to become a film director. However, I don’t like to be studying in a Spanish film school and studying international relations at the University of Madrid is quite expensive for me so I opt to learn through distance learning. I have been doing distance learning since 2003. And believe me or not, it’s more than filmmaking that I have taken as a correspondence course.

Even if correspondence course is old-fashioned, it provides me more advantage than studying in an online course. I still keep the notes and handouts that they send to me through mail. In an online course, you cannot retrieve your handouts from the Internet because a) you cannot save them into your disk; and b) you cannot login to your student account once you have graduated. Therefore, I still opt for traditional distance education.

While working as a newspaper reporter here in Salamanca, I started taking up short courses through distant education. The first one that I took was TOEFL or Teaching of English as a Foreign Language. It took me roughly 18 months to finish the whole thing but my English was polished. Even though I’m working as a newspaper reporter here, I have also been hired by none other than AP as one of their stringers here because of my honed English skills.

Then I proceeded taking up filmmaking. The genre of filmmaking that I admire most is neo-realism but before I took up that kind of course, I first took the course on filmmaking around the world. I soon learned that there are lots of lucrative film industries around the world. In fact, I learned that whereas Hollywood in the United States makes $3 billion, the Bollywood industry in Mumbai makes a whooping $4 billion or $1 billion more. Wow, my inspiration has never been Spanish journalists in the most honest sense of the word. My inspiration and idol here in Spain is Antonio Banderas. I want to duplicate his feat. Aside from being a popular actor in the United States married to no less than my celebrity crush when I was still a teen, Melanie Griffith, Antonio Banderas owns a chain of restaurants here in Spain. And the food there is good because they adapt to a strict Mediterranean diet.

I also learned that the South Korean, the Japanese, the Mexican, the Taiwanese, the Malaysian and the Thai film industries are prolific as well. South Korea just made its biggest budgeted movie ever last year, D War, with a Hollywood cast that includes Jason Behr of Roswell fame. Hollywood has long copied the Japanese film industry. One Missed Call is an adaptation of a Japanese horror film. Cloverfield is J.J. Abrams’s version of Godzilla wrecking Manhattan. Ugly Betty is the Hollywood adaptation of a popular Mexican soap opera. Thai movies are mostly based from horror stories. I also learned that the Philippines is a frequent setting for South Korean, Taiwanese and South Korean films and music videos while Morocco is a frequent setting for Hollywood films.

TODAY is the start of the year 2008 and for students and those who are on continuing education, welcome the new year and embrace it as another opportunity to learn lots of ideas where you can use it to your lifetime career. If you’re an agriculture student here in Salamanca for instance, then make the new year as another time to learn more on the latest technologies on how to maximize production at your family farm back home. And it’s not just the universities here in Salamanca that are opening back their classes. Actually, this is a worldwide phenomenon. Universities, colleges and other educational institutions from all continents across the globe are opening back their classes today even in the preschool levels. Let’s take a look at what’s in store in the world of education this 2008.

If you are a film enthusiast, then catch Martin Scorsese live at the university campus nearest you because in lieu of making films this year, Mr. Scorsese will be discussing his lifetime career and very innovative ideas in filmmaking which we have appreciated through the decades. I have been to one Martin Scorsese lecture in 2007 and it is very heartwarming indeed. Mr. Scorsese is an avid fan of the neorealist cinema and he is dedicated to the passion of that specific genre. I specifically admire how he has captured the essence of neorealism in such films as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Casino and Raging Bull. Taxi Driver in fact was so intense in fact that there was even one real life lunatic who attempted to clone Robert de Niro’s character as himself and shot then President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Raging Bull is another testament to Mr. Scorsese’s achievement with Mr. Scorsese expected to discuss in his lecture the camera angles employed in that boxing film which are all confined inside the ropes of the boxing ring. There is one particular shot in Casino that I like and shows a vivid portrayal of human erotic attraction in slow motion – the scene played by Robert de Niro and Sharon Stone in the casino.

Another avid follower of the neorealist cinematic genre is Michael Mann and if you are not available to go to the United States this year to listen to some of Mann’s string of lectures at academic institutions here, then you may do so online or better yet purchase an audio copy of his lecture series. After all, education in 2007 is not just about going to a traditional classroom. Learning can be flexible as with distance learning and online education. Mann’s earliest hit Manhunter, a prequel to Silence of the Lambs, is not considered under the neorealist genre but all of his subsequent works are such as Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral and Miami Vice. Mann was instrumental in bringing two Hollywood bigwigs together – Al Pacino and Robert de Niro – in one movie and I admire his work in exruciatingly not putting the two movie giants together in one scene yet achieve that perfect chemistry onscreen.