For the sixth year in a row, Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) is engaging global film industry analyst Colin Brown, Managing Partner and Director of International Operations at MAD Solutions, to mentor the festival's Young Journalist Award (YJA). The 10th installment of Dubai's prestigious film event will run from December 6th till December 14th, 2013.

An award-winning journalist, Colin Brown, former Editor-in-Chief of Screen International magazine, also serves as the Editorial Director of New York-based Slated, a private platform for accredited investors to track and back independent film projects online. He is also an Adjunct Professor at New York University.

The YJA workshop aims to foster the skills of a handpicked selection of ten talented aspiring writers and photo-journalists chosen from UAE universities. Those young journalists will form an editorial team that covers all aspects of the festival and its attendant Dubai Film Market (DFM). With assignments that include press conferences, screenings, panel sessions, red carpet premieres, and news interviews, the students get to experience the full gamut of journalism including writing reports, features,conducting interviews, press photography, and film criticism. At the end of the festival, the most promising YJA participant who demonstrates outstanding talent in covering the festival in all its aspects will be presented with the DIFF annual Young Journalist Award at a special ceremony.

A selection of the participants' written and photographic work will also appear in the DIFF dailies to be published by Screen International magazine.

Launched in 2008 by the Dubai International Film Festival, the Young Journalist Award program's main goal is to provide the participants with the opportunity to be mentored by experienced international film critics and journalists. As Brown explains: "Media coverage is the lifeblood of every film festival, which is why I look forward every year to participating in this DIFF initiative that provides talented students with the hands-on practical experience, competitive skills and film literacy required to succeed in their future careers".

"I give the festival's enlightened leadership enormous credit for not only nurturing this region's exciting new filmmakers, but also the young critics, writers, social commentators and photographers that are needed to spread the word on those storytelling talents across a wider audience. It is a measure of YJA's success that every year now I see former students of mine return to the festival as working journalists and media professionals," says Colin Brown.

Colin's educational mission does not stop there. In New York City, where he lives, Colin also teaches the Future of Film course to graduate students of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. The course was designed in conjunction with NYU's Cinema Research Institute (CRI), the prestigious film think-tank where Colin serves as an Advisory and Faculty Committee member. This course looks to inspire novel solutions from the next generation of CRI fellows by grooming graduate students to submit proposals for further research and to put into action new models for filmmakers and financiers, and to make this information available to the wider filmmaking community.

Recognized as one of top film schools in the world, with a campus presence also in Abu Dhabi, NYU Tisch boasts a number of world-class filmmaking alumni including Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men),Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire), Marc Forster (World War Z), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Debra Granik (Winter's Bone), Ang Lee (Life of Pi), Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise), Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing), Damon Lindelof (Lost), Todd Phillips (The Hangover), Brett Ratner (Rush Hour), Eli Roth (Hostel), Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas), M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) and Oliver Stone (JFK), among many others. Spike Lee, whose American remake of the Korean hit Oldboy will soon be released in the U.S., serves as the Artistic Director of NYU Tisch's Graduate Film Programme.