Meet Ana Hoppert Flores, a recent ECL graduate focusing on media production. Hoppert Flores was the president of the Carolina Film Association and an editor for Aspect during her senior year.
The Carolina Film Association is an organization dedicated to “offering resources, guidance, and organization to student filmmakers to realize their vision in a cinematic language over televisual or episodic forms.” Hoppert Flores became involved in CFA in the fall of her sophomore year:
“I transferred into UNC my sophomore year knowing that I wanted to pursue some sort of storytelling, but I wasn’t aware of all the mediums with which this is possible. I reached out to the organization, became a producer on a student film, and fell in love with the production process.”
Hoppert Flores became an Aspect (a student-led journal for criticism of film, television, video games and other screen-based media) editor in her junior year. She was invited to join after hearing about it from friends in the film concentration. One semester and two film classes later, and Hoppert Flores knew she “had fallen in love with exploring what has been and can be achieved through film.”
Her favorite things about working with this journal included “getting exposed to and learning more about different films and the way in which they engage in and with different practices and theories when reading submissions.”
In speaking to how her courses with the DOECL have prepared her to take on these positions, Hoppert Flores said:
“When it comes to my position as an editor on Aspect, taking film theory and analysis classes primed me to understand the language most frequently used to describe films in essays, while learning about form, style, and content and tracing these concepts prepared me to engage with submissions in a more fluid, critical way. Having the opportunity to work collaboratively in English classes, whether that be through workshops or group projects, also prepared me for my role as president of the Carolina Film Association.”
Hoppert Flores’ favorite courses within the DOECL include Film Theory (ENGL 680), Introduction to Poetry (ENGL 131), Race, Health, and Narrative (ENGL 370), and Queer LatinX Environmentalisms (ENGL 687).
Hoppert Flores also worked as the associate producer of a feature-length documentary, and is assisting with the production of a short documentary. Her dream is to continue to work on these projects after graduating while also “continuing to pursue the film medium when it comes to its creation, ideally through cinematography, or any camera and/or light-adjacent media production position.”