Yeff! is an annual European youth film festival held in alternating European cities.
Young people from all over Europe are asked to produce films on “cultural diversity” and to present their work at the festival. A network of European organisations will encourage teenagers to learn how to represent their own individual realities and to present their visions to a broader cross national public.

Objectives
The Yeff!-Festival is based on four main objectives:

• To encourage young people to learn film language and aesthetic principals of film and television while encouraging them to develop their voice.

• To ask the entrants to reflect on the experiences and perception of the issues “cultural diversity” from their individual point of view.

• To support especially young people with intercultural experience or experience of migration.

• To offer opportunities to meet and connect with other young filmmakers in a unique and specialised forum and to build up a European network of future filmmakers and journalists.

Background
Young people experience film and TV as a means of communication within their everyday lives, but they are not restricted to being passive consumers. With access to affordable video production and postproduction equipment, they have the means to become empowered producers. Understanding media and films is promoted by practising film-making and experiencing television production. We especially want to promote work from young people whose voices might normally be regarded as marginal and who don't have direct access to media institutions.

We hope to discover a fresh body of work from new voices and reveal new truths from a spectrum of cultures across the new Europe. By working on the issue of cultural diversity in the European Yeff!-Network, ambition becomes practice producing a valuable asset and a continuing enrichment of Europe’s new voices.

An nual schedule (from 2004-2005 on)
Yeff! will take place across the school year and start in September each year. In working with young people and film, the national and local partners will provide a learning environment for the young people which encourages technical expertise as well as social participation and cultural empowerment. By early summer of the following year, the films should be finished for national pre-selection involving a jury which chooses the best films to be sent to the festival.
These young people will be invited to take part in the Yeff!-Festival in the autumn.

As a competition could be divisive, our festival of the selection of the young people's films will celebrate the goals of the RESPECT! project: in this specialised forum, all festival participants can meet, qualify on and compare the involved issues, topics and techniques in a festival framework consisting of workshops and discussion events brought together with professional filmmakers and TV journalists. The festival might award special audience or jury prizes.

The Yeff!-Network
The European Yeff!-Network is a wide-ranging partnership of organisations working in the field of intercultural education, media literacy, public broadcasting and open channels, filmmaker networks, schools, youth education and anti-racism. We will constantly bring together more partner organisations from across Europe to join the present partners who are already members of the Yeff!-Network

For further details on participation contact your national Yeff!-Network or www.raa-berlin.de

Yeff!-Network

The Netherlands www.lbr.nl

Italy www.ismu.org

Belgium www.cinergie.be/cvb

Poland www.fem.org.pl

Sweden www.fcv.se & www.openchannel.se

Spain www.mitjans.pangea.org

France www.kyrnea.com

UK www.localtvonline.com

European Coordination and Germany www.raa-berlin.de

 

 

 

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