Pocket Films A bright future for blurred images

The organisers of the Festival do Rio obviously wish to keep pace with the newest trends in cinema, since as many as 58 “pocket films”, or films shot on mobile phones, have been included in this year’s programme, prepared in co-operation with the French Forum des Images. Their length ranges from 60 seconds to 75 minutes and topics are as varied as in any other section.

Clément Deneux’s Les Ongles (The Nails) is a thriller about Antoine, who’s always biting his nails and goes so mad when his friends tell him to stop that he turns a friendly party into a nightmare; Domofonia by Ludwik Lis is a micro-documentary showing how to turn a door phone into a musical instrument; and Michael Szpakowski’s Incident (awarded 1st prize at the 2009 Pocket Films Festival in Paris) is a single-shot silent reflection on hidden violence. The only feature-length piece in the section is J’aimerais partager le printemps avec quelqu’un (I’d love to spend springtime with someone) by Joseph Morder, a 60-year-old(!) France-based filmmaker from Trinidad. This intimate diary of Morder himself, screened at Cannes in 2008, didn’t really create big buzz, though it was the first feature-length pocket film in distribution ever.

Indeed, most cinema industry professionals seem to be indifferent to this new “caprice”. No wonder: in all these movies, it seems as if evolution went backwards. The image quality is of course poor, let alone when shown on a large screen. Sound usually isn’t much better and the use of special effects is very limited. When we add that pocket films are watched mostly online, which implies interruptions due to data buffering or simply a slow internet connection, there might be some doubts about their contribution to the development of cinematography (to be honest, I had some myself when I first heard about them).

However, once I started clicking on YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion, my scepticism soon dwindled. Sure, some of the movies are just plain awful, but several are extremely appealing. It does take some time to weed through the hundreds of videos film maniacs’ blog features, which might be discouraging if you aren’t lucky enough to immediately bump into a good flick. On the other hand, it’s exactly the accessibility of the tool that makes the new format so attractive. In other words, with 3G mobile phones, cinema goes democratic.

The outlook of pocket film still remains uncertain though. It will be interesting to follow its fate and, a few years from now, see whether it’s flourishing or has completely fallen into oblivion. As long as it helps discover new talents, I at least will keep my fingers crossed for it.

Dominika Uhríková