Movies for the very small screen celebrated in Paris festival
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-10-10 09:36

Festival director Laurence Herszberg said she doubted shed ever see directors such as Martin Scorcese making films on phones, adding that "it's a new form and it will attract its own creators."

She said that film-making with mobile phones was starting to be taken more seriously, pointing out that three other film festivals had asked her to loan them some of the works from the Pocket Festival and that several French film schools were adding the format to their courses.

The films -- about 90 in total, nearly all of which were edited on computer -- were shown on regular cinema screens in the Forum over the weekend but could also be seen on mobile phone screens set into installations in the centre's lobby.

These phone screens also showed short films from the Lumiere brothers, the French inventors whose 1895 film "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory" is considered the first motion picture.

The festival director explained that the constraints of making movies on a mobile phone were in some ways similar to producing film on the primitive "cinematographe" camera invented by the Lumiere.

Herszberg rejected suggestions that mobile phone films were merely a gimmick, pointing out that, for example, digital movie cameras were at first scorned by serious film-makers but have now been widely accepted.

The festival, jointly sponsored by Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, and a French mobile operator, comes as network operators in many countries are thrusting 3G phones equipped with video cameras and internet capability on their customers in the hope of recouping some of the huge investments they made in the sector.

While mobile phone users are long familiar with downloading ringtones, games, and graphics, they can now in some countries view "mobisodes," clips that play on a cell phone's screen.

In the United States and Britain, for example, "24: Conspiracy," a series of minute-long episodes drawn from Fox TV's "24" television series were available during the soap's last season.

There have been prizes for movies made on or for mobile phones at events such as the Sundance Festival in the United States, but the bash at the Forum des Images was the first in Europe dedicated to flicks made on phones, said Herszberg, adding that she plans for it to become an annual event.

A film festival in Taiwan for Asian directors of phone flicks began in late September.

Festival-goers keen to make a break into this new art form were able to make their own mini-films in a special studio and editing facility set up in the Forum, where actors and technicians were on hand to help.

And, this being France, the festival also hosted several weighty round-table debates on subjects such as the meaning of the new art and its sociological implications.