On May 30th, the film director Byun Youngjoo gave a motivational lecture for Sungshin University students at Sungshin Hall. This lecture was one of the General Education University festival events, held both offline and online. With 30 students partaking, the face-to-face lecture was executed under the guideline of social distancing.

The lecturer, Byun Youngjoo, is a female movie director famous for her movie The Murmuring  and especially Helpless, which earned her ‘Women Filmmaker of the year(2012)’ and ‘Baeksang Arts Awards: Best Director(2012)’. Proving her reputation, director Byun got the most fervent responses from the Sungshin students’ survey on selecting the speaker of lecture. 

She gave a talk with a topic of ‘The Creation of Movies and Life-the Joy and Courage of Writing’. Director Byun started her lecture from talking about her twenties and how she entered the movie industry.

In school, she did poorly. She could barely graduate because of her low grades, so she had lots of worries on her future direction. “Before I graduated, I had to identify what exactly I like and map out my career path, so I wrote down my interests in sentences. Then I found the duplicate keyword from them- movies!” She took her first steps in developing her career by discovering her interest in movies. She advised students by saying: “Write about yourself in detailed sentences, not in several brief words. This will be the start of comprehending yourself and would be helpful for your writing, too”  

However, the journey to her dream wasn’t favorable. Her frustrations at not being able to create movies and economic hardships kept her from achieving her dream. But she never indulged in self-pity. “While you are sank in self-pity, your misfortune will last forever. The way to overcome your trouble is releasing it. Try not to get trapped by ruinous thoughts. Look at your emotion squarely and try to figure out the reason for your unpleasant feeling. If you succeed to do this, your story will begin.” 

She added advice on writing scripts. “Good writing can be made when writer decides on how to live. You need to decide who you are, what you like, who you want to meet. To do so, you should experience as much as possible. You have to study all of the music, pictures, and movies in the world. Then you will find out what you are fascinated in.” At the end of the talk, director Byun answered the listeners' questions, related to creativity, movie works and even social issues.

An attendee Kim Juyeong(Culture & Arts Management, Class of 20) was also an aspiring movie director and came to learn from the director Byun’s insight. The sentence ‘to avoid self-pity’ was really taken to her heart. “I think self-pity is common symptom for people these days and depression also comes from it. I learned we have to distinguish ‘self-pity’ from ‘self-reflection’.” She added “One more thing I earned from today’s talk was to travel and feel many things, now I am considering how to manage my time to experience wider society.” Another attendee Ok Yejin(Culture & Arts Management, Class of 20) said “I have reproached myself before, but through the tips about ‘overcoming self-pity’, I found bit enlightenment about life.”

Director Byun Youngjoo shared both her tips as a writer and life mentor. This lecture would be the worthwhile time for students to pave the road of their lives and to grow as a mature writer following director’s footprints.

The full video is uploaded on the school’s official YouTube channel ‘Sungshin Tube’. Take note of her talk when you visit the channel!

By Shin Yura Cub Reporter