Concerned Citizen TMA112

Our documentary "Driven" is about Pablo Quintana from Santiago-Chile, and currently an American citizen. Pablo lives in Salt Lake City and is on of the executive directors of a non-profit organization called Hispanic Community Connection (HCC).  He saw a need three years ago. Pablo found out that Latino community needs help passing the driving test in English. Himself and other associates founded the non-profit organization - HCC, that helps people from Latin community of different ages to get a driver's license teaching from the driving handbook in English and Spanish. This program not only help Latinos with their driving license, also help them to be more integrated to society here in Utah.  Pablo Quintana designed a teaching method based on a year of experience and many other ESL programs.  He realized that older Latinos have some limitations that were not considered on ESL programs.  Because of that He invested many hours with the Latino community working with other professionals figure in out the best way to teach this specific group of people.  This small initiative changed Pablo’s life and the life of those who have taken this course.

We called this short film “Driven” because it shows how one person can make a different being driven by one cause in order to help the Latino community.When we were shooting we decided to shoot some of the students to portray their frustrations and maybe how Pablo feel about them.  Also we shot some sheets of paper in the wall, which had some words on them- like "Learner", "Failed", etc. That also adds to visual language of our project. Furthermore, we wanted to make a picture of the kind of room this people is preparing themselves and how they react to it.  We did some sit down interviews with Pablo, we asked him to tell us how he feels about what he is doing, about his hopes and expectations for future, and how it all started for him. We struggle a little bit with the location, Latino Mall was one of those location, and the other one was the DMV He told us that at first he didn't even know if this initiative was actually going to work.

When we went to a location (Latino Mall) where students were getting ready for the test, we filmed some clips of the environment to make the audience feel closer and more understanding to what must feel these people. First time we saw the students we thought that they looked very friendly and in their eyes we could see this urge of this little but important thing-getting a driver license. As we were working on the project we could see some of the happy students going out of the DMV, the ones who passed the test and the way they looked at Pablo, I could tell how big of a difference he is making in their lives, we could tell it's especially making him happy.

 We think this issue is very important, but we don't think a lot of people even think about its existence. We hope our documentary will help some people to understand something new and to appreciate more what they have, since for these people even such a small thing as driver's license is crucial.