'It is not where dreams take us but where we take the dreams'
Tuesday, December 4th 2007, 4:00 AM
Braganti for
News
Uruguayan Eduardo Darino has a filmmaking resume that spans more than 250 films.
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Big Town Big Dreams
Editing the reels from termite films was the closest Eduardo Darino could grasp in 1973 for his dreams as an aspiring digital film editor.
Darino, a 29-year-old law student in Montevideo, Uruguay, was editing science films after classes before receiving a Fulbright scholar-ship, which propelled him to the United States.
He imagined a life in Los Angeles editing feature films, but the Fulbright committee informed him he was headed instead to New York University's Tisch Graduate Institute of Film and TV.
"I think it is not where dreams take us but where we take the dreams," Darino says, repeating an inspirational quote taped over his desk and wearing a gray sweater over a blue collared shirt in his apartment near Union Square.
His studio is dotted with seven computers and boxes of film reels, animation sketches and scripts spanning three decades.
The jovial 63-year-old has a filmmaking resume that spans more than 250 films. He has edited films ranging from "Gone in 60 Seconds" to "Toy Story 2," and he created a special effects library that is now used around the world.
He is working toward a Ph.D. at the Universidad Educación a Distancia in Spain and uses 34 years of experience in New York film as a professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens.
"He's very humble, but when someone acknowledges it, he's very proud," says Lucia Darino, his 29-year-old daughter, who sees her father's work around the city, from an introductory film at Ellis Island to movie theaters - where he created the cautionary medley of phone rings and baby cries that shushes moviegoers before films.
As a boy growing up in Montevideo, Darino could only dream of such achievements.
"In Uruguay, if you say you want to make movies, you're crazy," explains Darino, who speaks English, Spanish, French and Italian.
He dabbled in newspapers, writing movie reviews while attending law school at Uruguay's Universidad de la República in the absence of a real avenue to pursue filmmaking.
He became fascinated by films like Norman McLaren's 1955 "Blinkity Blank," an animation short about a bird and its cage. He met his wife, Susan, in law school, and they married in 1973 before moving to New York.
"New York is like this mistress that gets you and won't let you go," the filmmaker says of finding not only a home but also a relationship with the city.
Family photos are scattered around the studio: Lucia at her wedding in India, a black-and-white with Darino smiling widely between his daughter and wife, he and Susan on their wedding day.
Sitting at a computer desk with a "What a difference a Fulbright makes!" sign, Darino's work surrounds him: Superman sketches from an ad for the American Lung Association, remnants of a Snoopy animation and one of his current projects: digital representations of the prostate cancer he is battling.
"I got my friend here again," he says of a computer screen filed with mirrored V-shaped streams of blue and purple against spheres that represent cancer cells. Darino keeps his skills fresh by continually creating works and mastering new technology.
"In New York, you're as good as your last job," Darino says. The filmmaker has plenty of successes to anchor him, however. In 1973 he created his own company, Darino Films, and his special effects library evolved in the 1980s, when special effects were emerging and were popular but difficult for amateurs to re-create. The Library of Special Visual Effects is licensed in more than 68 countries.
"I always had this against-the-grain stuff," he says, recalling how his ideas like multiple screens were innovative 20 years ago but are now commonplace.
T hroughout his career, Darino traveled the world, taking young Lucia to France and Italy to shoot films and collect awards at film festivals.
His only daughter, who he says is "worth a million children," says his inability to pursue his passion in Uruguay led her parents to be very supportive of her career choices, from microbiology to consulting.
"He's always pushing people to do beyond what they can do," she says.
As a professor, Darino cultivates an atmosphere of humor and hands-on work, challenging students through special effects classes at Pratt and animation and video editing courses at Vaughn, where he developed the digital technologies department. He also previously taught at NYU.
"It's a way of giving back, too," he says of assisting graduated students who still meet him for coffee or swing by to show him their graphics.
Kevi Louis-Johnson graduated from Pratt last year. Darino was both her professor and adviser to a motion graphics project.
Teaching technology can be a difficult task, Louis-Johnson says, and professors often don't have both graphics mastery and people skills.
"He has a really good combination," she says, adding that he would joke in the classroom, saying his own mother could use an oversimplified program.
"It's very inspiring to see where he started and where he's come," Louis-Johnson says. "He's really invested his time."
Do you know an immigrant New Yorker who achieved his or her dream in our great city? E-mail Maite Junco at BigTown@nydailynews.com
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