Croatian delegation visited Seoul International Youth Film Festival in South Korea
Seoul International Youth Film Festival is one of the largest youth festivals in the world. From its beginnings in 1999 until today it tries to present art and culture of youth to wider audience and pushes film and media culture as educative alternative. 17th edition was held in Seoul from 5th until 12th of August. Young filmmakers from Foto kino video klub Zaprešić – Marijana Barišić, Marta Brgeš and Rebeka Čuljak accompanied by Vera Robić Škarica and Marija Ratković from Croatian Film Association participated as Croatian delegation.
SIYFF tries to include youth in all segments of festival organizations as well as in judging. Each year 100 young people from 20 different countries form a youth jury. As a part of the judging process, young jurors participate in different lectures and workshops about film criticism. Movie Camp is also organized and it started few days before the actual Festival and where youth, divided into four different groups, filmed short movies (‘from idea to final product’) cooperating with colleagues from around the world. Croatian delegates have this opportunity since last year, next to Denmark, USA, Sweden, Australia, China and Korea. At the end of the camp, jury made of mentors of foreign delegations chose best filmed movies – group where Marijana was won two awards: for the best script and the best actor.
Time at SIYFF in South Korea was an award to young filmmakers for their award at the Croatian Children’s Film Festival, Youth Film Festival and National High School Film Festival in Karlovac, which was the case with Zaprešić students. Is there a better encouragement for youth filmmakers that visiting other festivals and meeting friends equally in love with film as they are? Today when technology is more than accessible to children and youth, these experiences have even more meaning. Connecting and collaboration are probably the most important segments when working with children and youth because it not only introduces them to different film expressions but also in different cultures, approaches and ways of thinking which will help them in their future careers no matter where they end up. On the other hand, this networking puts Croatian Film Association on the film map of the Europe and the World and makes it desirable partner in different projects that appear more and more each day considering applications within Creative Europe program. To be precise, children and youth exchange was announced in Seoul with organization from Chicago and presentation of Youth Film Festival and Four River Film Festival at BUFF, children and youth film festival in Sweden as well as collaboration on media literacy with Australia. There is nothing left to say but that Korean summer harvest was more than successful.
17.08.2015.