Youth Film Festival and Four River Film Festival made first exchange of festival organizers with Nordic Youth Film Festival - Adriana Dimić stayed in Norway!
Nordic Youth Film Festival (NUFF) has been held for 12 years in the north of Norway in Tromso during the month of June. The festival consists of two separate events: first, there is the competition program. Highly appreciated by the young professional authors of short films, it is divided into two categories: international youth films and Nordic films, which are judged by an international and Norse jury during the festival week. Second, NUFF organizes a week of intensive workshops with the aim of creating short films. Participants are 40 young people from around the world at the age of 15-25 selected by the festival organizers after registering online. The only requirement is that they are not professional writers, because the workshop takes only amateur authors.
NUFF is an important cultural event which has managed to set up its own form of a successful festival for young people, proving that it is possible to encourage young people to adopt their own voice, opinion and idea to develop a confident presentation on the big screen. In this context, they developed partnerships with many festivals from third world countries, such as the Southern Youth Film Festival in South Africa and others.
Thread link between Karlovac (Youth Film Festival and Four River Film Festival - an international event dedicated to high school film, which this year brought together 160 guests from 30 countries in the town on the four rivers - Karlovac) and the Norwegian festival is not only high school film, but also young people who organize the festivals. In fact, most of the organizing team for both events consists of high school students (over 40 of them!) with the help of older fellow students or recently graduated young people. It's a winning combination, because young people work for each other and thereby develop very important skills; starting from mutual communication, communication with the media, and team work to planning, promotion and management. Those qualities are required of future artists, scientists or business people. They gain knowledge in all sectors: the press office, the guest office, running the cinema... So, in an original way young people are prepared for their future careers (whether they will be managers of market communications or molecular biologists), which is a truly unique example on the Croatian territory, but also in Norway.
Depending on the sector involved and their interests, their involvement in the organization also varies. For some it is a just five days during the festival, and some are involved in the organization all throughout the year. The quality of the implementation of this program is the fact that some of the most active organizers of FRFF are today brand managers, sales managers, specialists in human resources, film producers, educators in kindergarten, sports coaches - and every one of them used the experience in their work.
A step further in this operating mode is certainly the mutual festival organizers exchange between Norway and Croatia. As of this year, both festivals are held at the same time (in the second half of June) it has become more than possible. In short, the idea was as follows: in the period of June 1 and July 1 (the period just before the festival, during the festival and immediately after the festival) one member of the festival organization from Karlovac will go to Tromso, and one member will come from Tromso in Karlovac. During that month of stay at the second festival the person will be involved (depending on interest) in various sectors of the festival, watching the organizational aspects of the other country (which is essential from the international angle) with expectations to use this acquired knowledge at their own festival next year. For starters it was done from the Croatian side. Namely, in the name of the Karlovac film festival Adrijana Dimić (23), student of production at the Academy of Dramatic Art and long-time head of guest office at the YFF and FRFF - all in all, a young person who still has many opportunities and challenges in front of her - stayed at the Nordic Youth Film Festival in Norway.
This is what she said about the experience: "I spent 15 days in Norway and my task was to lead their guest office, communicate with them every day and inform them of all important information and possible changes in the program. Also, I coordinated both juries (international jury and Nordic countries jury), and I was responsible for transmitting information to the jury members in the organization of meetings where they made their decisions. The experience was great both for my personal development and my professional career. I met a lot of young film lovers, but also some familiar faces that I have seen at our festival in Karlovac! I hope we will have the opportunity to continue this project and the exchange because we gain new experiences and contacts which we can develop into new projects in the future."
If the project proves successful, networking of more festivals (members of YCN) and an increase in the number of participants is possible. The ultimate goal is that young organizers from Norway, but also from Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy and other countries come to Karlovac, and that members of the Karlovac organizing team participate in the same events across Europe.
The final idea (in the following years of project development) is that young festival organizers travel around Europe and see different models of organizing events they can later use at their own events.
30.06.2014.