Travel and film

I’m writing this application just two days after graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. This last year has been an incredible time, full of countless experiences and life lessons that have brought me closer to what I aim to make my profession: documentary filmmaking.

Travelling has been a major driving force whenever I try to apply to scholarships or pitch stories to my professors. And this didn’t change throughout grad school. During my one-year Master’s program I produced many video stories but the ones I’m most proud of where filmed abroad.

I’m attaching two links to my stories in this application. The first one is a character-driven story about a boxing coach in Chicago’s Little Village that inspired me to travel and produce the second one; this time on location. What I like most about this example is that it shows how a single story can change where you will go next. In my case, it took me to Nicaragua, a country I knew lots about but never had visited. There – and thanks to a grant given by my school – I shot the second story, “Alexis’ Legacy,” about how child boxers of Managua see in this sport the only way to put extreme poverty behind them.

I’m certain that if given the amazing opportunity to travel to Colombia under this film scholarship I would do great work and I think it would be the perfect chance to put in action all of which I learned this past year during grad school.