by JANIS JOPLIN MOISES
DELEGATES FROM participating Southeast Asian countries showcased their documentary productions on the last day of the collaborative video project, De-Centralized Asian Transnational Challenges (D’CATCH) 2020, hosted by the Communication Arts Students’ Association (CASA).
“So basically, what we wanted to do is invite all of these media students from the different countries, participating countries and find a way of mixing their cultures, their skills and the craft of media, and how they can collaborate well enough to produce seamless videos” CASA President and D’CATCH Officer in Charge Voltaire Avendaño said.
D’CATCH was attended by media students from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. They were divided into five groups and were given three days to produce local documentary videos regarding the themes assigned to them.
China and Japan were originally part of the event but were not able to participate this year due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak.
Avendaño said they set up a split screen for the other half of the delegates in a different room during the closing event to limit the number of participants in one venue, following the protocols set by the Secretary General due to the COVID-19 scare.
This year’s theme of ‘TRANS’ consisted of five sub-themes: Translate, Transportation, Transfigure, Transient, and Translanguage. The CASA president said they incorporated some changes into the guidelines for the creation of the documentaries to further challenge the delegates.
“[W]hat the professors were expecting is more of a start from scratch, from what they had, they can use some of their clips pero majority of it had to be shot and produced here. So naging challenging siya for the three days they had to prepare,” Avendaño explained. The delegates started brainstorming during their breakout session on Tuesday and began shooting from Wednesday until Thursday.
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“The objective of the project is not only to theoretically clarify and examine media problems and potentials, but also to practically act and work within the society toward the realization of a diverse media culture and reconstruction of media environment in Asia from the social-cultural perspective” Asst. Prof. Faye Abugan said in her opening remarks.
A closing dinner was held at St. Raymund de Peñafort Building after the screening of documentaries in the TARC Auditorium on Friday.F
