New video camera by Claudia Sonea

The cell phone has reached a new peak and is in continuous evolution. Besides the fact that it is indispensable to people in an era of communication, the cell phone also offers the possibility to exchange e-mail, surf the Internet, read novels and navigate on miniature digital maps. The latest attribution found to the talking box is video camera used to take short movies by every day people. In 2005 in France a cell phone film festival debuted and now has is held for the first time in Japan on Friday, October 7. There were 400 entries in this international contest but only 48 pocket-size statements on film were selected and all were shot on camera-equipped cell phones. These short movies, streaming on monitors of cell phones strapped to tables, offer a voyeuristic feeling that because they are practically taken on the run with streets and cars whizzing past in a blur with close-ups that don't rely on zooms and other fancy editing techniques. Furthermore, the mini-videos 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. He also added that the cell phone offers masses of amateurs have access to the world of film-making because is an easy cheap one-person operation. Among the movies participant were Seeking Truth" by Weilong Hong from Singapore (a young man with a cell phone walking in an alley and everyone around him walks backwards), "Remember," by Yang Duck-kyue from South Korea (layers of sepia-toned photos are torn on the footage like a collage of fading memories), "Passerby" by Michiko Tsuda, 27, a graduate student, "Walkers," whose main character is a pair of sneakers that takes a trip on a train. Also Kojima is a 20 year-old university student and director of "Thumb Girl"- a movie about a fantasy companion who eases human suffering by always being a willing listener. Jean-Louis Boissier, a French media artist and professor at University of Paris 8, in town for the festival, stated that the mobile phone is unique, not only working as a camera, but also as a projector that shows video on handheld screens. It is only the beginning but the forecast is promising. More to come…

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071207/ap_on_en_mo/japan_cell_phone_films;_ylt=Ap57SxOORA0cBJzpDxGOIDqs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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