Quem é...

Waleed Talal Al Madani é alumnus do mestrado DocNomads e fala da sua experiência no DocNomads e na Universidade.

What is the importance of Universidade Lusófona during your Master's Degree, both in terms of structure, equipment and teachers?

Lusófona was my playground for my thesis documentary film, as a big chuck of it was filmed in Lusófona film studios. It was the place where I always knew that it was open 24/7 for me to work on editing my visuals and sound in their editing studios. It was the place where I spent a year of my international master degree, attending my lectures, meeting with my mentors who were helping me hand craft my projects and documentaries, trying our best to make them in their best shape, and for me through that process learn the skill set of making of documentary films.

How important is the Master's degree in your academic and professional career?

With complete honesty, a master's degree as a piece of paper in the field of film making, is simply useless, it might look good on your wall over your bed, and give you false self value, but it won't make films for you. What you can use in the professional field is what you've learned through getting that master's degree, working on your films really puts a lot of your skills to the test, and what is more fruitful is when you work on your colleagues' films under different capacities, and then sitting with your mentors to exam the results of these films and learn from our mistakes and try to make it better the next time. That is where you feel the true value of a master's degree.

Define the Universidade Lusófona in a sentence.

Our playground, they gave us the tools and told us “Go make something good, and learn”.