Victory of Our Future Journalists

The selection tour of the international youth festival of TV ideas “You Can” has been over. Students of the Department of Philology & Journalism of Astrakhan State University have taken prizes.

Meetings and master classes with well-known professions of the mass media industry were held in mid-May 2014. For several days, the participants attended master classes given by the film director Vladimir Gerchikov, as well as by TV presenters Yana Churikova, Arina Sharapova, Natalya Metlina, Andrey Bakhmetyev, Natalya Semenikhina, and Alexander Ilyin. They also took part in making a TV program for the Astrakhan 24 TV Channel.

The selection tour program was very similar to the format of the international festival traditionally held in Riga (Latvia); it included making video work related to a socially crucial theme in the most efficient way.

Astrakhan State University has won the selection tour of this international festival. The 1^st and the 3^rd places, as well as the prize of the audience’s sympathies, have been gained by teams of ASU’s Department of Philology & Journalism. The team that took the 1^st place has got a certificate for €7.5k and the right to present Astrakhan Region at the 4^th International Youth Festival of TV Ideas “You Can” to be held in Crimea this year.

This is what Maria Felk, a student of our Department of Philology & Journalism and the captain of one of our teams, says: “We were to make a video whose theme was “World without Borders”. We chose a relevant and an essential theme - orphanhood. Our video aimed to stimulate the society to pay more attention to orphans’ problems. We wanted to show that a rich internal world of a kid is much more important than his or her unattractive appearance. The issue we raise deals with moral problems of the modern society: its cynicism, its ignoring other peoples’ troubles, connivance, and lack of responsibility. We felt our competitors were strong, and we tried to work creatively and enthusiastically. I can say for sure our victory gave us not just professional experience, but also a hope that the social problem we concerned will be resolved”.

Russian original information source: Dmitriy Bychkov (the Press Service of ASU)
Russian original photo source: Evgeniya Mikhova (the Department of Philology & Journalism of ASU)

Translated by E.I. Glinchevskiy (the Center of Translation Studies & Conference Interpreting “ASTLINK” of ASU)