A senior at Qatar Foundation (QF) partner university Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), Alessandra El Chanti is among the Class of 2019 graduates who will be lauded at QF’s Annual Convocation ceremony on May 7.
She is the winner of two prestigious NU-Q awards: the Dean’s Award, and the Media and Research Award for Best Documentary for her short film Revive the Lira’s Glory. The documentary is about an artist in Lebanon named Ibrahim Sultani, who paints different Lebanese artists on the country’s devalued banknotes in order to symbolically retrieve their value.
El Chanti’s Education City story is a testimony to the unique environment of learning and personal exploration that QF opens up to its students.
El Chanti was a high school science student in Qatar when she first heard about NU-Q’s media and communication courses at a career fair.
Though she had set her sights on working in a science-related field, the newly-discovered subjects spiked her interest enough to make her want to reconsider her university options.
The following year, she was accepted into the Bachelor of Sciences in the Media Industries and Technology programme at NU-Q.
“I don’t think there is any other place like Education City. Here, students like myself, succeed because we’re given the time – and mental space – to truly discover who we are,” she says.
“The resources and guidance we have access to are unparalleled. The option to cross-register between different universities in Education City is something I could do only because I was at Qatar Foundation; I studied media and communication at NU-Q, and pursued a joint minor in Media and Politics at Georgetown University in Qatar.”
“Looking back, I know all these factors inspired me to be less rigid in my approach to ideation; to try out new techniques in writing and filming – all of which gave me the confidence to make the short film for which I won these awards. Today, I can firmly say that what I’ve achieved wasn’t an overnight miracle; rather these four years have been leading up to this moment.”
