Movies shot on mobiles to be showcased at festival

New Delhi, Jan 13 (IANS) Young filmmakers from 15 nations across the globe will use mobile phones as a tool to create short films and upload their entries online for the Second International Festival of Mobile Cinema (IFMC) next week.

The IFMC is being organised by the Asian Academy of Film and TV (AAFT), a leading media school in the country, under the patronage of its founder Sandeep Marwah.

The entries will have to be uploaded on batchbuzz.com, an online interactive youth platform, for the jury to judge them Jan 21 after a three-day screening session Jan 18-21 at the Noida Film City in the outskirts of the capital.

A portal for the young social networking enthusiasts, batchbuzz,.com has taken the responsibility to upload the movies for all those who submit their entries on the Internet after creating the clips on their cell phones and transferring them on to the Net.

The idea, says festival director Akshay Marwah, is to showcase new talent for Bollywood and promote state-of-the art technological formats used in movie-making.

Gadgets are becoming smaller and processes faster, Marwah said. And Miniaturisation was emerging as the new trend in moviemaking.

'All entries have been created using mobile phones. The entries have to be original and should not infringe on copyright laws. And the capsules should not exceed three minutes,' Marwah told IANS.

The nominations will be divided into three categories - fiction, reality and still image.

The jury will comprise Bollywood veterans like Rahul Rawail, Syed Mirza and Pankaj Parashar; still life photographer Arun Anand, Gurbir Grewal, president of Indian Motion Pictures producers' Association (IMPPA) P.P. Agarwal, professor Karl Bardosh, pioneer of cell phone cinema from the Tisch School of Arts, and Kurt Inderbitzen from Hollywood.

Explaining the nature of the festival, the only one of its kind in the country, Marwah said the initiative began in 2006 when Bardosh came up with the idea of cell phone movies and introduced them at the Tisch School of Arts, an arm of the New York University, and at the American Film Institute as course modules.

According to Marwah, once the movie has been shot using a cell phone camera, the file can be transferred either through the port, email or by blue-tooth technology.

'Miniaturisation is the trend. Huge cameras on trolleys have made way for smaller cameras being carried on shoulders, which now has made room for digital handicams. But webcam has revolutionized everything, and even filmmakers have begun using this format to create works of art that leave one astonished,' Marwah said.

The institute has tied up with the Rajshree.com, One-Tech, Batchbuzz, Producers' Guild of India, Time Broadband Services, Shivkala Motion Pictures, Mgurujee.com and Dragon Lab.com for the festival.