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Pocket Films Festival in Japan

Pocket Films Festival in Japan

From December 7 through December 9, the Pocket Films Festival was held to expand the horizons of expression through mobile phone video. This event marked the first mobile phone film festival ever held in Japan.

The festival was first hosted in 2005 by the Forum des Images, and in June 2007, the third festival took place at the Pompidou Center both in France. In September 2007, the Tokyo University of Arts and the Forum des Images established an agreement on international exchange. On this occasion, as part of a strategy to nurture and promote the festival on a global scale, the festival came to Yokohama.

The key feature of the festival is the large-screen display of video taken with mobile phones. For the Yokohama festival, a Mobile Program has been added, in which films are presented on a mobile phone display. The new program was established with the aim of exploring new modes of expression in a time when films are often made only for display on a small screen.

The winner of the grand prize was a film entitled "720/24," which depicts 24 hours of life in Tokyo. As the video was taken over the course of the 24 hours, the mobile phone was rotated clockwise in synchronization with an imaginary hour hand, corresponding to the time of the relevant scene. The film, which is intended for palmtop viewing on a mobile screen, opens up a new possibility for narrative style, drawing attention as a successful product of the festival's revolutionary concept.

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