"Pocket Film Festival": Japan Holds World's 1st Cell-Phone Film Festival

Yuka Kojima's five-minute ''Thumb Girl'' video is among the works on display at the inaugural Pocket Films Festival festival that opened last week in Yokohama., featuring 48 movies -- all shot on camera-equipped cell phones.

Forty-eight films, chosen from more than 400 entries from 18 countries -- including Japan, Singapore, China, South Korea and Germany -- will screen in competition at the festival, organized by the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

The competition has two categories, one for films to be shown on regular screens and the other for films to be viewed on phones. The winning film will receive 500,000 yen (US $4,500).

Hazy and raw but urgently personal, these pocket-size statements on film, like Yuka Kojima's five-minute ''Thumb Girl,'' were selected from more than 400 entries in an international contest.

The works, edited as digital files on a personal computer, have a voyeuristic feel because the cell phone is so unobtrusive, were streamed on monitors of cell phones strapped to tables. Devoid of the typical grandeur of standard feature films, the pocket videos were filled with everyday shots, many taken on the run down chaotic streets and cars whizzing past in a blur.

"Of course, the resolution is comparatively low on phone cameras, so effective use of that is important," organizer Yuko Mori said. "People have also made films where only a camera phone could go. One entry, by grade-school children, was even shot inside a fridge."

The festival, which organizers say is the first in this nation, marks yet another use for the omnipresent portable phone in Japan, the DoCoMo capital, used ubiquitously to exchange e-mail, surf the Internet, read novels and navigate on digital maps.

The works also point to an important emerging art form, says Masaki Fujihata, film professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and one of the festival's judges.

''The cell phone is something you always carry around and so you can roll the camera on a whim,'' he said. ''There's such an intimacy between the work and its creator. It's spontaneous.'' Fujihata said he was particularly fond of the nine-minute ''Walkers,'' whose main character is a pair of sneakers that takes a trip on a train.

Fujihata and other experts say the medium is opening up the world of film-making to masses of amateurs in a manner similar to the YouTube phenomena.

''Passerby,'' a witty puzzle-like piece by Michiko Tsuda, 27, a graduate student, uses a split screen to show images taken on two cell phones -- one held by a man in the men's room and the other by a woman in the women's room. They each take video of their own image in a mirror, wander into the hallway, where they meet and then switch cell phones, all the while recording video.

Unlike regular films that require lots of money, people and time, the cell phone film is an easy cheap one-person operation. Even its relatively poor visual quality can be an advantage, often making for arty imagery, they say.

Softbank and Sharp are supporting the event. Softbank, a major mobile carrier, took over Vodafone Japan and also owns Yahoo Japan. Sharp was the first company to sell a camera phone, in 2000, and is now a leading maker of TV-enabled phones.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Links:

Pocket Films Festival in Japan: http://www.pocketfilms.jp/en/
http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/19837/?nlid=740
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/awards_festivals/news/e3i30e25f15c78d913141b6cf60400689f5