Gustavo Fernández and I met at a Berkeley Film Society Members screening of Cowboy Del Amor a little over a year ago and—as they say—you know your friends when you meet them. His killer smile and disarming charm had me sharing with him something I had recently started: a blog called The Evening Class. He was genuinely interested and supportive of my new creative project and we decided to become filmbuds.
When the opportunity arose to interview Deepa Mehta as Water was coursing the festival circuit, it was Gustavo who suggested I might want to invest in a Sony digital recorder. There's been no stopping me since. In the interim, Gustavo has himself invested in digital camera equipment and it was with great pride and satisfaction that I introduced him to Susan Gerhard at SF360 to pull him on as an intern photographer. His assignment? To provide four images a week. How to do that? "Hey man, what you doing tonight? Want to be my official photographer with my interview with Michael Winterbottom? With Alan Cumming?"
So our friendship has taken this great turn as we collaborate and enhance each others' bodies of work. My genuine thanks to Gustavo—not only for our friendship—but for being willing to pose official photographer for The Evening Class. I hope you all look forward to his contributions to the site.
