Sitting at editing bay No. 5 in the digital media lab at MSU’s Communication Arts and Sciences Building, MSU telecommunication graduate student Jeff Hamlin reflects on eight years, six trips across the ocean and more than 40 hours of tape.

He has been putting the finishing touches on his movie, “Finding Fidel: A Young Man’s Journey through Cuba.”

And now it all comes down to the glow of three computer screens and plenty of patch cable as he prepares for the premiere of his documentary on the Communist country.

That, and a few hours.

“Everyone wants to know why I’m doing it,” Hamlin said while fine-tuning the film with more than 24 hours to go before showtime. “I don’t know why - I like it. It’s my life’s mission right now.”

Hamlin’s task began in 1994, when the opportunity to make the trek from the states first presented itself. After leaving his parents a quick message on their answering machine, he hopped on a diesel boat for the four-day jaunt to Cuba.

His companions included a chef, a retired Air Force Colonel, a jeep attached to the boat and a bulky VHS camera.

With that camera Hamlin began taping footage that would become part of his new movie, which premieres during a free show at 7 p.m. today in the Erickson Kiva. The filming on that four-day trip was more for himself and his friends as proof of his spontaneous trek to Cuba.

But when he got to Havana, the film he shot became much more.

“Everything was different,” Hamlin said. “The minute I landed I fell in love with the place.”

That love inspired Hamlin, a digital media arts and design student, to return five more times, even buying his own sailboat and staying for more than four months at a time. Hamlin explored the country and eventually decided to see the nation’s leader, Fidel Castro, with his own eyes.

Hamlin often traveled alone on his small sailboat through the Gulf of Mexico during trips that could range from 18 to 30 hours.

While most of the journey was filled with smooth waters and sunshine, there were a few dangers. Hamlin found himself having to avoid large tankers at night and keeping himself aboard when he nearly slipped into the water - the result of leaking oil on the deck.

When he got to Cuba, Hamlin shot hours of footage with cameras ranging from the original camcorder to a high-tech digital. The footage is full of all the people he met and befriended, and also some included Castro speaking. With what he had gathered, it was sure to make the documentary that Hamlin had originally envisioned.

Then came the hard part: Convincing Hamlin to show the movie.

Officials of the Kresge Art Museum’s exhibit, “Wrapped Words: Handmade Books from Cuba’s Ediciones Vigia,” and officials from East Lansing Film Festival had been searching for a movie depicting Cuban life. A grant from the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment of the Humanities supported that search.

And for Susan Woods, the director of the festival, the solution was pretty simple.

“He was the first person I thought of,” Woods said.

Hamlin had worked for the festival before, and had even thought about submitting other movies for consideration to be shown. But the unassuming filmmaker never thought his movies were quite good enough.

So Woods went to the next best person to get the film: Jeff’s mom, Susan Hamlin.

“Knowing how many boxes of tapes he had, he was ready,” his mom said. “It seemed like the most natural thing to say, ‘Yes.’”

And once his mom had given her approval, Jeff just couldn’t talk his way out of it - Woods was planning on his movie.

“She won’t take no for an answer,” Hamlin joked. “I thank her for it now.”

The deadline meant Hamlin would spend long days in front of an editing bay. But the hardest part would be making it correctly, pulling from all his tapes to preserve the Cuba that he discovered on his trips.

That Cuba is something far more than the stereotypes many people harbor about the nation. A quick glimpse of Hamlin’s footage reveals the bright, exuberant colors of the nation and plenty of smiling faces, rather than an oppressive government and poverty.

And while the movie is called “Finding Fidel,” a healthy amount of the film is aimed at introducing a beautiful country rather than a political leader - the same nation that caused Hamlin to feel such a connection once he set foot there.

“The biggest misconception is Castro,” Hamlin said. “Cuba’s so much bigger than him. I learned about this whole society where people are so nice. He’s just a politician.”

Hamlin’s film comes at a time when more and more Americans are finding their way into Cuba, and Hamlin will soon have even more students to share stories with about the country. A group from MSU is a planning a Study Abroad trip in July to the nation.

“The main goal of this trip is to give Cuban students a chance to interact with American students and vice versa,” said MSU geography Professor Robert Thomas, one of the excursion’s leaders. “It’ll be a great opportunity for all the students to experience how a different system works.”

The trip will be the first for the university, which joins the ranks of schools such as Duke University and University of North Carolina that are taking college students to learn about a place known more for cigars than landscape. MSU has obtained a two-year license to travel directly from America to Cuba, something that normal travelers are forbidden from doing.

And thanks to some new equipment, even students not signed up for the trip will be able to experience a little bit of Cuba on the Web. ASMSU has provided Hamlin with $3,000 of funding for portable editing equipment so that he can place footage from his past and future trips directly to the Web, allowing anyone to access it from their computer.

“It’s a great project,” said Jennifer Deschoff, chairperson of the ASMSU funding board. “MSU undergrads can really benefit from this project and learn about other cultures.”

Hamlin is preparing another trip to the country later in the year, although not for such a massive project as “Finding Fidel.”

As his fingers move across the keyboard to complete his movie, his eyes light up just talking about all the memories of the places he’s been and the people he met during his travels. And when he focuses and examines each frame, his desire to make the film great is evident.

“I just want everything to be perfect,” Hamlin said. “Every night, there’s always something I could change.

“I just want everything to be perfect.”

Staff writer Tara May contributed to this report.

“Finding Fidel: A Young Man’s Journey through Cuba” will be shown in Erickson Kiva from 7-9 p.m. Admission is free.

Drew Harmon can be reached at harmondr@msu.edu