2707 KOR Film Festival
austraLasia #2707
 

Don Bosco Youth Broadcasting School organises Korean Youth Film Festival
 
SEOUL: 5 September 2010 -- The 14th DYBS Youth Film Festival was held on Sunday, September, 5, thus resuming a practice last promoted in 1998. The festival venue was the Don Bosco Youth Broadcasting School (DYBS), established in the 1980s as a part of the youth education mission at the Don Bosco Youth Centre. Fr. Hong Isidol has been director of the Youth Centre since 2008. Bro. Bosco Kyung-Sek Park is in charge of the media institute which forms part of the Centre, since its establishment. The purpose of DYBS is 'to evidence Catholic thinking and spirituality through media theory and practice and encourage young people to create their own films in South Korea'.
    The 14th festival in 2010, has been remarkable for the coordinated and preparation by DYBS graduate students. Over recent years in Korea, a number of youth film festivals have been produced, commonly sponsored by commercial companies. The 12th Seoul International Youth Film Festival (SIYFF), the largest youth film festival in Korea, was sponsored by FedEx, Joong Ang Daily, Lotte World and other major enterprises. This year DYBS, adhering closely to its stated philosophy of expanding Korean youth horizons while at the same time giving rein to Catholic thought and spirituality, took up the challenge of organisation. The festival's main theme was Youth Rights and Media Impact on their lives and thinking.
    The team was organised by 5 main staff and 1 associate staff member. The 5 main members were educated in DYBS, which is accredited as an alternative education institution in South Korea.
    A sub-theme of the 14th DYFF was 'Good Internet, Bad Internet, and Weird Internet', an idea which the team borrowed from the Korean Film The Good, The Bad, The Weird. This time, the festival invited teenage students in South Korea who have created short films about the Internet. Korean society is often criticised as a nation overwhelmed by the Internet, where 90% of the youth are addicted to social networking and violent online gaming. The organisers also scheduled an extra program, ‘Internet and Media Symposium’ during the film festival. This time 17 amateur student directors applied for the competition and 9 films were selected by the media professionals engaged with DYBS over a decade.
    Speaking of the event, Br. Bosco said "Generally speaking, people are phobic about AIDS, however I think people, and more so teenage youth don't realise the danger and seriousness of a kind of 'Mental AIDS' or an unconscious addiction to commercial media content leading to the loss of an individual philosophy of life. It can be a reflection on Korean media culture, where young people follow sexually stimulating TV reality shows and play violent online games, and are discouraged from thinking".
     He added that the DYBS Film Festival will continue to share basic Catholic thinking with young people and that indeed it will be organised by young people again in the future.

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