When I was a student, (back in the day) one of things I did at our poly was to help set up a film society to show films you could not ordinarily. Every Friday night at 6pm before heading for the pub we devoured anything with subtitles.

The films from Latin America were always among the most interesting and challenging. I learned so much about so many different parts of the world by watching their movies.

I love the art of a good storyteller and I always found the rhythm and grammar of their films so much more interesting than the Hollywood standard fare.

Our programme had films from Chile, Argentina, Brazil and of course Cuba. Then came the Sandinista revolution, an event which gripped our imagination. The overthrow of the Samoza dictatorship and later the David and Goliath struggle between the FSLN against the counter-revolutionary Contras backed and financed by the US.

This was the very early 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp and we took great heart from the Nicaraguan struggle.

In artistic terms it produced some great literature as well as a series of short documentaries, which we showed to gather support for the solidarity campaign.

In more recent years the radical democratisation of Latin American politics has generated some stunning new films. The smaller Central American nations have all been gripped by this new wave but face considerable problems in getting films made. There are the usual problems of raising finance, securing distribution but these are in many ways made worse by the lack of the necessary skills. The nearest film school is, as you may expect, in Cuba.

It was a real delight when back in 2010 after a 20-year-long silence Florence Jaugey’s film La Yuma hit the screens in Nicaragua. The first feature film to be made in the country in all those years.

It told the story of a young woman who dreamt of escaping her bleak life in the slums of Managua by becoming a boxer. It hinged on the extraordinary performance by Alma Blanco as the title Yuma — her strength, astuteness and determination reflected the feelings of the adversity and inequality faced by Nicaraguans.

It was an instant box office success and was shown at many film festivals receiving the audience award at San Francisco.

The film gave us the rare opportunity to glimpse life in a country which has been through much difficulty in recent years. Jaugey — originally from France — came to Nicaragua in 1984 to be the lead actress in the movie El Senor Presidente by the prolific Cuban director Manuael Octavio Gomez.

In 1989, together with her partner Frank Pineda, a Nicaraguan filmmaker who worked with Ken Loach on Carla’s Song, they set up in Managua the independent film company Camila Films Production Company.

Jaugey’s new film La Pantalla Desnuda (the naked screen) is premiered in Britain now. Filmed in the province of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, this is the story of a couple who, topically, have their intimate relationship made public on social media.

To say making these movies is tough is an understatement. It took Jaugey 10 years to make La Yuma despite being an award-wining short film director. La Pantalla Desnuda has cost £325,000 scraped together from sponsors and crowd funding.

They have to do all sorts of work to make ends meet. They have worked with Simon Reeve on his BBC2 three-parter Caribbean broadcast earlier this year.

Many of us remember the importance of short films in the Nicaraguan revolution when Incine — the Instituto Nicaraguense de Cine (Nicaraguan Film Institute) — was important and made dozens of short documentaries about the revolution.

As Jaugey says: “It was a time before the internet and a way of showing to the outside world what was happening in Nicaragua — everybody wanted to film and be Nicaraguan.”

Now you can help support this fantastic new endeavour by treating yourself to an afternoon of Nicaraguan film.

• You can see La Pantalla Desnuda together with one of Jaugey’s prize winning shorts Cinema Alcázar and Running in Solidarity, directed by George Fuller, a story of a young woman runs the London marathon for the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. Call (020) 7561-4836 or visit www.nicaraguasc.org.uk/shop/filmshowtickets.htm