Doha Debates Puts International Visionaries in the Melissa Itwar Artistry Makeup Chairs

Melissa here, in first person. This was a big one.

Two weeks ago at The Queen’s Quay Terminal Theatre in Toronto, Doha Debates hosted the live Townhall Discussion Football Fandom: Community or Commodity? In their historic Canadian debut, Doha Debates brought their distinct debate format to the FIFA FanFest Hub in partnership with Al Jazeera News and Qatar’s Years of Culture Program to remark on ways in which the global football audience has evolved, and why. 

Moderated by South African journalist Imran Garda, the show featured vibrant and revealing dialogue between Canadian sports journalist Shireen Ahmed, British sports writer and broadcaster David Goldblatt, and Brazilian sports activist and filmmaker Kely Nascimento-DeLuca. The Majli style discussion gave to university students from Qatar, Canada and Mexico the opportunity to present their opinions on the disparity of where football is going, where it arguably should be, and how to correct that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97wg8sa7VU

In this career highlight, I was invited by InColour Films to bring the Melissa Artistry Team to process hair and makeup for the live event, along with the recording of two additional podcast episodes for future release. Over 3 shoot days, we were tasked with providing comfortable, real-life hair and makeup for international professors, clergy, diplomats, scientists, and scholars - not actors or models accustomed to lengthy processing times and heavy product application. Some were delighted to pick our brains; some were honoured to be taken care of; some were reluctant. All were fascinating.

This milestone booking granted me the privilege of having private personal conversations with Biohacker Liz Parrish, former President of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda, Iranian Lawyer Payam Akhavan, Clinical Psychologist Judith Locke, and Author Ritika Subhash. I started these shoot days with a fangirl energy simmering under my skin, but was soon also intrigued by how interested these brilliant minds were to accept knowledge from regular people like me and my team. Imagine being an Indian author’s first conaissance of indentured servitude and how it created countries full of people that look just like them, across the ocean. Or the simple synchronicity of one’s late son and sister sharing the same birthday as your own brother and late aunt. Or that another has visited your parents’ obscure and little-known home country many, many more times and more vastly than they have.

When InColour Films first invited me on board months ago, we thought Al Jazeera would simply take me on as the Assistant Makeup Artist, and I was fine with that. Either way, it was about to be the biggest client of my career for a long while. As the shoot dates approached, I learned I’d been promoted to Head of Department. I immediately knew the first I’d ask to assist would be my closest colleague and confidant Carley Chamberlain, followed by Trinity Wong. Having managed other live-recorded interview-style productions with me, their skill, speed, and grace were invaluable. We also had Jasper Davidson join for day 3 processing. 

Like much of the Western world, I first learned of Al Jazeera News because of 9/11 in 2001; I was 14. Along with much of the Western world, I learned a highly demonized,

terrorist-adjacent reputation of this particular news network. Thankfully, we live in a world now where we get to unlearn the propaganda we’ve come to realize we were slathered with in our youth. The fact that many young people I talk to don’t even know who Al Jazeera is in a post-9/11 world is altogether enthralling for me: a millennial for whom Western fear-mongering of them was inescapable 25 years ago. My passion and advocacy for my current sociopolitical values made being a part of Al Jazeera’s redemption in modern Western media nothing short of an honour.