Life in Focus
Eduardo Castro Fonseca came to SDSU as a Fulbright student with a multicultural history.
This semester, SDSU NewsCenter will focus on the arts with stories of the creative endeavors of our students, faculty, staff and alumni. This story also appears in the spring 2014 issue of 360:The Magazine of San Diego State University.
Born in Portugal, schooled in Wales and now firmly entrenched in San Diego, Eduardo Castro Fonseca observes life with a perspective sharpened by exposure to multiple cultures.
A Fulbright award gave him the chance to study film in the U.S. at age 23. He chose San Diego State University from a long list of graduate film programs, in part because “it’s like a small version of Hollywood where students don’t just study scriptwriting or camerawork. We get to try everything.”
Nearly everything he’s tried has turned to gold. Castro Fonseca won the Cinema Society of San Diego’s Pitch Award plus the prestigious WALLY! Award and a Kathleen Kennedy grant from SDSU’s theatre, television and film department for his final project, “The Sumner Redaction,” which he will enter in several festivals this year.
Another film he wrote and produced also won acclaim, including a best script nomination from Portugal’s Shortcutz Awards. “Lovely Lies” is the story of a young girl who realizes she’s been deceived by Hollywood’s version of romance and comes to understand that her parents’ marriage is built on a different kind of love. The film cleverly uses subtitles to reveal the characters’ true feelings as they tell each other lovely lies.
“Before coming to SDSU, I worked as a translator, creating subtitles for Portuguese television,” Castro Fonseca said. “That played a huge role in ‘Lovely Lies’ because it gave me the idea to include subtitles in a new way to intrigue the audience.”
Castro Fonseca completed his master’s degree last summer, and currently works as a studio technician for the KPBS news show “Evening Edition,” a first step toward his goal of becoming a writer and creative producer.
“I love creating ideas for television,” he confessed. “Even when I’m quiet, I’m conjuring things in my head.”
Make sure you use and follow the hashtag #ArtsAliveSDSU if you're on Twitter.
