NYFA Hosts Dinner at Miceli’s for Foreign Fulbright Students

March 9, 2017

Last week, the New York Film Academy College of Visual & Performing Arts (NYFA) hosted a special dinner for new and continuing Foreign Fulbright students who are attending graduate programs in Filmmaking, Photography, Screenwriting, Documentaries, and Film and Media Production. NYFA is proud to be hosting Foreign Fulbright Grantees from seven countries (Lithuania, Spain, Egypt, Finland, Indonesia, Angola and the Dominican Republic) currently; in recent years NYFA has welcomed more than 50 Fulbrighters to our campuses in LA and NYC. NYFA Fulbrighters have hailed from Bahrain, Angola, Indonesia, Egypt, Spain, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Finland, Uruguay, Dominican Republic, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Switzerland, Vietnamese, Ecuador, France, Sri Lanka, Russia, Paraguay, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Zambia.

micelis nyfa
Left to Right: Monika Sedziute (Lithuania), Miguel Cruz, Pedro Peira (Spain), Abdallah ElDaly (Egypt), Marcus Louis Fien, Lotta Lemetti (Finland), Melarissa Sjarief (Indonesia), Jose Siles, Hugo Salvaterra (Angola), Amalia Ramirez (Dominican Republic)

The March 3 event took place at Miceli’s, a classic Hollywood venue, which was established in 1949.

In this wonderful setting with live piano music and waiters singing movie classics — as well as songs from the recent hit film “La La Land” — our Fulbrighters had the opportunity to share interesting conversations on diverse topics, with, of course, filmmaking being the shared passion.

Hugo Salvaterra (Angola) MFA Filmmaking
Hugo Salvaterra (Angola) MFA Filmmaking and Pedro Peira (Spain) 1YR Documentary

Current NYFA Fulbrighter Pedro Peira (Spain), who had just returned from The Berlinale (The Berlin International Film Festival), shared anecdotes of the festival, as well as the implications of having one of his movies: “Soul,” selected to open one of the headline spots at the Festival.

José Siles, President of the Fulbright Alumni Association of Los Angeles, spoke with our international scholars about all of the enrichment and networking opportunities that the rich Fulbright community of LA has to offer. As a researcher at NASA, José shared with us many interesting details about the recent discovery of exoplanets orbiting the star Trappist-1, which NASA published last week.

Jose Sila
Jose Siles, NASA researcher and President of Fulbright Association LA Chapter and Monika Sedziute (Lithuania) MFA Photography.

Hugo Salvaterra (Angola), our the most recent Filmmaking Fulbrighter to join the LA cohort, recently transferred from a semester at the NYFA NYC campus and delighted to meet his LA peers, and share his first impressions with other scholars in the different fields related to filmmaking.

In a lively discussion with the scholars, Miguel Cruz, NYFA´s Director of Fulbright Initiatives, and Marcus Louis Fien, Senior Admissions Specialist & Manager of Fulbright Admissions, shared future initiatives that NYFA is planning, including a Fulbright Film Festival to be celebrated later this year.

Lotta Lemetti (Finland), BFA Photography.
Lotta Lemetti (Finland), BFA Photography.

At the special invitation of NYFA’s leadership, on Monday, March 6, the current cohort of Foreign Fulbright Students attended a special NYFA screening of the Academy Award nominated film “Hacksaw Ridge” and had the thrill of meeting acclaimed actor Mel Gibson, the film’s Director, who came to NYFA to discuss the project.