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Final Cut
The first 15 minutes of a recent session of History of Film class is not unlike the movies the students have been studying: It is silent.
There is no noise except for the scratch of pen to paper. The 22 students are bent over a quiz about the early history of filmmaking – a history that includes everything from William G. Horner’s zoetrope (a precursor of the motion-picture camera) to D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.
History of Film is perhaps the best place to get acquainted with Dr. Mario Beguiristain. The course allows him to merge the pedagogical expertise he earned while pursing his doctorate from the University of Southern California with the experience he gained as a cameraman, writer, and film and television producer.
“Dr. Beguiristain, or Dr. B as we sometimes call him, brings a world of experience into his classroom for the benefit of his students,” says Barry Gordon, director of MDC’s School of Entertainment & Design Technology (SEDT).
An example of the depth of Beguiristain’s expertise was easily recognizable during the lecture he gave the week prior to the film history quiz.
The topic was Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. Released in 1915, the movie is based on Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel, The Clansman, which romanticizes the birth of the Ku Klux Klan as the South’s saving grace. In one scene, a so-called “renegade Negro,” played by a white actor in blackface, is apprehended by Klansmen in white robes and hoods.
The NAACP called the film racist propaganda and it was banned in eight states after riots broke out at screening venues. The KKK used it to recruit new members.
From a technical perspective, however, filmmakers recognize that Birth of a Nation set a new standard for filmmaking. It was one of the first films to incorporate close-ups, night photography and tracking shots, among other innovations.
As a student at the University of South Carolina in the 1960s, Beguiristain tried to get a print of the film for a screening at the campus film society.
“The Museum of Modern Art wouldn’t release it to us,” he says. “The KKK was still using the movie to recruit members and we were sending our request from a South Carolina address.”
What Influences Film
The History of Film gives Beguiristain the unique opportunity to provide students with a global view of the profession they want to enter.
By surveying world cinema, film students learn that their industry isn’t immune to cultural shifts, political upheavals or war. On the contrary, films are a product of those forces, recording for future generations the influence of the majority and the resistance of the minority.
“Movies reflect the periods in which they are made,” he says. To study films is to study the history of societies.
Such was the case with German Expressionism, a film movement that emerged after World War I.
This was the topic of discussion once Berguiristain’s students completed their quizzes.
“You have to understand that this movement was multidisciplinary,” he says.
“The artistic style of German Expressionism is found in industrial design, painting, film and even poetry.”
The war, he explains, introduced Europe and the rest of the world to technological innovations and horrors, such as mustard gas and civilian killings from air raids.
Naturally, films took on a darker aesthetic, as evidenced in the work of F.W. Murnau, Paul Wegener and Fritz Lang.
“People were also consumed with a newer understanding of human psychology – the ego and the superego and how the two could be manipulated,” Beguiristain says.
He roves the room in a salmon-colored shirt and black jeans while periodically referencing his PowerPoint presentation.
“There was this general understanding among artists and filmmakers that there is no difference between the objective and the subjective,” he says.
Pausing, he turns to the class.
“What does that mean? The subjective and the objective?”
When no hands emerge immediately, he points to a student. “Tell me.”
The male student answers: “The subjective is when you’re emotionally involved, your opinion. The objective is when you are neutral when it comes to the subject.”
After a few more students offer their definitions, Beguiristain summarizes. “The subjective is how you perceive something,” he says. “The objective view presents cold facts that cannot be disputed. For filmmakers of the 1920s, this meant bringing a new aesthetic to their work. They began to fully control their sets, the lighting, and you see a lot of stories that play with the idea of psychological manipulation. The idea is the world appears to us as it is felt. The artist takes reality as he or she perceives it and gives it a subjective quality.”
Once the lecture is complete, Berguiristain screens two films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis.
Before showing Metropolis, he says: “Some facts about the movie: Hitler was an art student when the movie was released. It was reportedly his favorite. The movie explores class struggles and social engineering. And, it features the first robot in the history of film.”
A student shoots his hand into the air and offers another observation. “George Lucas was inspired to make Star Wars after watching this.”
“The golden robot on the advertisements and posters for Metropolis looks just like C-3PO,” Beguiristain adds.
Teaching by Example
A surprising thing to note about Beguiristain is despite his love of film, he did not originally set out to become a filmmaker.
Born in Matanzas, Cuba, he came with his family to the U.S. in 1963, briefly attended Hialeah High School, and graduated from O’Keefe High School in Atlanta, Ga., in 1966.
After a year studying architecture at The Georgia Institute of Technology, he decided he couldn’t pass the math requirements and went to film school at New York University.
He’d later transfer to the University of South Carolina, where he received a bachelor’s in comparative literature. After graduation, he and a group of friends bought a Volkswagen van and set out for California. Beguiristain wanted to break into the motion picture industry.
By 1970, he had landed an apprenticeship as an assistant cameraman trainee. For the next two years, he worked on a series of film and television projects, including Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain, George Roy Hill’s Slaughterhouse-Five, The Lucy Show and an episode of Columbo, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Beguiristain earned a master’s in film education at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1975. Three years later, he completed his doctorate in communication (cinema), and was the recipient of a CBS Fellowship.
While Beguiristain was at USC, film legend Alfred Hitchcock visited his Theatrical Film Symposium for a screening of Frenzy.
“The film was fascinating,” Beguiristain says. “It was quite an experience to have met the man.”
Career Achievements
Meeting Hitchcock was just the start for the budding filmmaker.
While working on his doctoral dissertation – The Influence of the Actors Studio in Hollywood During the Fifties – Beguiristain landed freelance writing and directing gigs, and twice had the honor of directing Orson Welles.
He also worked as script consultant on Richard Lester’s Cuba and Sydney Pollack’s Havana, and then, in 1981, he was tapped to serve as Al Pacino’s dialect coach on Brian de Palma’s Scarface.
Later, as a broadcaster in the general market, NBC-TV commissioned his groundbreaking, 90-minute late-night comedy pilot Off-Hollywood, which aired as an alternate to Saturday Night Live during the show’s heyday in 1978.
In the mid-1980s, Beguiristain entered the field of Hispanic advertising, eventually becoming creative director at six major national Hispanic advertising agencies. His advertising work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a Clio, the highest award in advertising.
In 2000 he launched and served as general manager of the International Football Channel – a 24-hour pan-regional signal exclusively broadcasting soccer to Latin America from its base in Miami.
Becoming an educator was the natural next step, Beguiristain says of his decision to transition to academia.
In the Classroom
Since 2003, he has lent his expertise to amplifying the curriculum in the School of Entertainment & Design Technology. When the school partnered with Telemundo to offer a scriptwriting workshop for Spanish-language writers, he helped to develop the syllabus. Forty students have graduated from the program and many are now employed by the network.
But the associate professor of film most enjoys his time in the front of the classroom, where he can use his personal experience to help students navigate through Hollywood when they get there.
Take, for example, the time he spent on the Scarface set.
“A lot of the Spanish in the script was terribly incorrect,” Beguiristain says. “It was full of errors in language and expression.”
He wrote a memo outlining the errors. “Oliver Stone got upset that I was messing with the script,” he says.
He was fired when the production returned to California after a brief South Florida stint.
“I discuss this experience with them as a lesson. Moviemaking is an art and a passion, but it’s also a business. You have to be tactful when contradicting somebody who has a lot more power than you do,” he says.
Still, he says, the experience was positive. He respects Stone’s work. And while working on the Scarface set, he also collaborated with Scarface co-star Steven Bauer and MDC alumnus Andy García on another film, South to Southwest.
The film was put into development after some South Florida residents complained Scarface capitalized on negative stereotypes about Miami and Cuban immigrants. South to Southwest was pitched as a positive story.
While it never received full funding, Beguiristain says, “I learned how projects are financed, and how things get to be produced. Unless you’ve lived through it, you don’t get it.”
Anecdotes like this make him a valuable educator.
“Dr. Beguiristain is an outstanding authority in his field and is one of the great assets of SEDT,” Gordon says.
— Gariot P. Louima