Film festival for movies made on cellphones

Paris: Film-makers aren’t usually known for having pint-sized ambitions. But, in an unusual Paris film festival taking place this weekend, that’s exactly what they are proudly exhibiting.The second ‘Pocket Films Festival’, which began on Friday and will run till Sunday, is to showcase what up-and-coming cineastes can do with the newest breed of cellphone digital cameras. The event will screen 80 works filmed on handsets loaned to directors, artists, film students and even amateurs.While the movies may have been made with miniature equipment, the finished products – fortunately for the public – may be seen on the big screen. That in itself is a feat, one made possible by the rapid advances in video technology incorporated into the newer phones, the Forum’s artistic director, Benoit Labourdette said.“This year, we’ve seen huge progress in terms of telephones. The resulting images are four times bigger” than the ones in last year’s festival, in which some films were heavily pixellated or took up only part of the screen, he said.That, for example, was the case for Jean-Claude Taki, a French director who made a 24-minute film in Kazakhstan with his mobile. “Now he’s made the (mobile) format his trademark style,” Labourdette said. The French festival broke new ground when it first came into being last year. It is still the only festival to show only phone-camera films, but many of the French entries have gone to feature as sideline attractions at general film fests.The top four winners at the festival this year will each receive a 3G camera phone.First place will also get Euros 2,000 (Rs 1,15,629 approx), while second place will get half that sum.