Forum des images launched the first Pocket Films Festival three years ago in October 2005 to investigate the idea of whether images taken with a mobile phone will produce a new form of “cinema.” In France at the time, mobile phones that were capable of recording and transmitting audio-visual content were a relatively new thing.

Forum des images (originally Vidéothèque de Paris) was established in central Paris in 1988 and even amongst France’s institutions of audiovisual culture, it has a particular interest in the relationship between innovation and artistic expression.

It is not only known for having an audio-visual archive of Paris but also for a unique brand of special feature screenings and festivals. It welcomes as many as 340,000 visitors a year (it is currently undergoing refurbishment and a party is planned for its reopening later in the year).

At the first festival Le cinéma au bout des doigts (Cinema at your fingertips), about 100 of the latest mobile phones were handed out to young creators and students working in many different areas for their own mobile phone film projects. The idea of a mobile phone as a new creative tool attracted many to participate in an adventure involving cinematic art and the associated images that are part of the French national identity. The first year was trial and error and collecting the films afterwards was problematic, but by the following year when the film festival had become better known, films lasting an hour or longer with intimate subject-matter and a story to tell had emerged. This year in its third year, the festival is now international with about 1,500 submissions arriving from 30 countries. From the 1,500 mobile phone films, as many as 170 were selected and screened, and landmark mobile communication-based projects for each country were unveiled.

If you were to put into words what the Pocket Films Festival is about, those words would be “continuous evolution.” At last a film festival that is about technique but also about creativity and emotion is coming to Japan. You may be the person who carves his or her name on the festival for posterity.

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