From heartfelt documentaries and compelling podcasts, to captivating audio features that transport you back in time, creative productions by eight AUCians took home 13 awards at this year’s Broadcast Education Association (BEA)’s Festival of Media Arts.
The prestigious BEA is one of the top three international conferences in the field of media and communication. The wins were among hundreds of submissions from all around the world across the different festival categories.
Leading the charge with five awards is Kim Fox, professor of practice in AUC’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. Fox excelled this year by becoming the first to win Best of Festival in two different categories.
She received the awards for episodes of her acclaimed podcast, Ehky Ya Masr (Tell Your Story Egypt), a narrative nonfiction podcast about life in Cairo. The winning submissions, How Egypt's Water Crisis Impacts Food Production and The Syrian Shawarma Takeover, won Best of Competition in their respective categories, qualifying them eligible for the Best of Festival award.
Two of Fox’s students also took home awards. Maya Abouelnasr, multimedia journalism senior and Nouran Saleh,a senior double majoring in political science and journalism, received second and first place respectively for features that they produced in Fox’s Audio Production course.
Abouelnasr’s feature, "The Musical Magic and Scorched Legacy of Cairo's Khedivial Royal Opera House v2," delivers the history and significance of the old Cairo Opera House, particularly focusing on the devastation caused by its burning in 1971.
“I interviewed one of my mom's friends whose late father performed there as an opera singer,” she said. “He shared the memories of his father on the day [of the burning] and provided insight on just how much the loss of the Opera House felt like losing a second home to the performers.”
Having previously won Best of Show at BEA’s On-Location Creative Competition for the original version of the feature, winning another BEA award means a lot for Abouelnasr.
Magdy, who won first place in the Television News Category, covered a perplexing ritual in her film Besha’a, which is Arabic for “Licking Fire” — a method used to detect liars involving a scorching hot spoon.
“I was told that in Sarabyoum, a city in Ismailia, there are bedouins who implement this ritual and people come from all over the world to them when they’re accused of a crime in order to determine innocence,” Magdy said.
As uncommon and unpleasant as the topic may seem, Magdy was drawn to it out of curiosity and a desire to understand the myths and superstitions still believed today, she reported. Clearly, she was not alone in this yearning, as was confirmed when she got wind of the award.