No Set Route
También puedes leer este artículo en español, Un Camino no Transitado
Luis Hernández wasn’t born with a camera in his hands, but his approach to filmmaking is fueled by an instinctive curiosity about the world, and people, around him. The documentarian-meets-storyteller has traveled from Little Rock to Romania and back, carrying with him a unique perspective rooted in experience.
Growing up in Arkansas’ capital city, Hernández had a culturally rich, if pretty typical, childhood. The youngest of four, Luis was born in Arkansas; his parents and two eldest siblings immigrated in the early 1990s from Mexico for his dad’s career as a jeweler.
“I come from a family of artists. All my siblings make art,” he says. “My dad, he comes from a line of jewelers; all his brothers on his side do jewelry, a lot of my cousins do that. It’s a very artistic family on that side, so I’ve always been around it.”
His dad also enjoyed taping home videos. That was Luis’ first exposure to moviemaking; watching and re-watching the raw footage of family life — much of it recorded before Luis was even born — captured his imagination.
“It really resonated for some reason,” Luis says.
He eventually saved up birthday money to buy his own camera and started filming his own home movies. Taking inspiration from skateboarding footage, he continued to develop his creative vision and by high school was making scripted shorts with friends.
When he graduated from Catholic High, going to college felt like a formality. Luis started a major in physical therapy at the University of Central Arkansas, but after a year, decided to study film instead, and there, he discovered a true passion.
“Once I started getting into the art classes and film classes, I think that was when I was like, ‘OK, the passion is actually here,’” he says. “UCA is cool because it’s a school that gives you resources and allows you to do what you want. … If you go there and realize, ‘I have access to equipment, I have access to people,’ you can do a lot.”
Since he completed college, Luis has written, directed, acted in or worked in some other capacity on several shorts and feature-length films, both in Arkansas and elsewhere. “Luis,” a self-portrait in short film, explores his feelings around executing his creative vision. “Los Vagos” tells the story of another filmmaker, a documentarian searching for meaning as he captures life around Little Rock.
“I want to create a feeling when people watch a thing; I want to create something that’s interesting, so when you leave, you might be like, ‘well, that was confusing, but I feel sad now, or I feel some feeling that I don’t necessarily comprehend, but I came out of it with something,’” Luis says.
In July, Luis booked the Ron Robinson Theatre to screen “Pigeon Tongue,” a film he wrote and directed with UCA classmate Tim Morrison. He self-funded the movie’s production in Romania and the screening, seeking out sponsorships to help pay for the venue. He’s planning a move to Mexico in the coming months, where he plans to focus full-time on his art, which he says he hopes is a path he can help others follow in the future.
“You don’t have to know movies. You don’t have to know directors’ names,” he says. “It all comes from your own experience, your own life, the way you see the world.”
