Mr. Salvador Eduardo Velasco Rios

2018 MALCS Graduate

Curator and spokesperson for the Japanese Film Festival in Mexico
Teacher for the National Cinematheque of Mexico on diverse East Asian Cinema

Biography

My greatest passion since I was a teenager is watching films, especially Asian films. I wanted to study Film Studies, but I didn’t have many options in Mexico; instead, I got an undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature, where I learnt a lot about narrative arts. After graduating I started looking for viable options to accomplish my dream of specializing on Film Studies and after considering many options throughout the world, I chose MALCS at The University of Hong Kong because of the importance of Hong Kong’s film industry, the international prestige of HKU, and its well-designed syllabus. After graduating, I decided to specialize on Japanese film history, and got accepted on the most prestigious institution on the Spanish speaking world for Asian Studies, El Colegio de Mexico, where I just got another Master’s degree in Japanese Studies.

During my time in the program, I acquired the necessary tools to look at films from diverse academic perspectives; I learned about the film industry, about film history, about film theory and its relationship with cultural studies.

Experience at MALCS

The MALCS program was a turning point in my goal to achieve my dream of specializing on Film Studies. During my time in the program, I acquired the necessary tools to look at films from diverse academic perspectives; I learned about the film industry, about film history, about film theory and its relationship with cultural studies. The knowledge and passion with which the teaching staff shared their knowledge, combined with my empirical love for films, sowed a seed that is paying off in my professional career. I have very fond memories of my time at the University, of my teachers and my friends, of the select film materials in HKU libraries, and of the time I got the opportunity to meet Werner Herzog and Aamir Khan on campus.


Salvadore Eduardo Velasco Rios: Posted on Facebook and IG on Mar 14, 2022

Teaching East Asian Cinema in Mexico

Teaching on East Asian cinema in Mexico and Latin America has been a truly gratifying experience for me since I didn’t expect at first that so many people would be interested. But from the first course I taught, I realized East Asian cinema traditions, authors, and movements raise a lot of curiosity among students in this side of the world. I started teaching a webinar on the history of Japanese cinema for a Peruvian association, in which I had more than 800 students each session. Then, I was offered by the Japan Foundation in Mexico to give some conferences on diverse authors’ work (Yasujiro Ozu, Seijun Suzuki, Akira Kurosawa, and diverse topics of contemporary cinema). Finally, last year I was approached by the National Cinematheque of Mexico to become part of the teaching staff, where I first taught a course on the Japanese New Wave, and currently I am teaching a course on the films of Wong Kar-wai. Preparing the classes and materials for this course on Wong Kar-wai made me realized that I wouldn’t be here if not for what I learnt in the MALCS program on how to approach academically to the phenomenon of cinema. I can’t find a better way to cure my nostalgia and celebrate the time I spent at The Hong Kong University than paying homage to the titan of Hong Kong cinema through my course.