Pocket Films Festival

Screenings, conferences with discussion periods, workshops
In partnership with the Forum of Images of Paris
With the collaboration of Benoît Labourdette, director of the festival

Offering people the opportunity to be the producers of their own images gives them the chance to discover that these very images become, for them, their own texts, with the ability to draw in viewers or persuade them to a particular point of view.
Neither true nor false, they are points of view supported by an intention. As reflections of reality, the images mirror opinions as well as fleeting sensations, allowing memories to be found again at will.

With the advent of the cell phone, photography is no longer associated with the attempt to halt time but rather is seen as a way of accompanying the movement and beauty of the world. (…) From its previous role of assuring the identity of things and objects, photography has now become the mirror of metamorphoses.
Serge Tisseron

The Forum of Images

The Forum of Images was founded in 1988 with the goals of building an audiovisual memory of Paris and conserving its history, as well as its architectural, cultural and social evolution.
Today, the Forum’s special collections comprise 5,500 films, of which 4,000 hours of footage are on Paris from 1895 to the present. The films include many different formats, such as documentaries, publicity films and short, medium and full-length dramas.

Having organized festivals, special appearances, discussions, workshops, master classes, cinema courses and various other meetings and gatherings, the Forum of Images itself has also produced more than seven hundred films pertaining to social and urban change.
These have enriched its collection on Paris, as well as its body of amateur films, which are important components of twentieth century memory. Each year, the Forum opens its doors to new, formerly inaccessible collections.
All of this is made possible through a partnership maintained with institutions working for either the production or distribution of cinematic or television work.

Pocket Films Festival

The Pocket Films Festival was founded in 2005 by the Forum of Images, in collaboration with SFR Film, its founding partner, and with the support of the National Center of Cinema (CNC) and of the Society of Authors and Dramatists (SACD) in order to follow the development of the new “democratic” camera, the cameras that now come with many cell phones.

The annual meeting is a unique time of exchange and discussion, where positions are taken on important issues concerning future artistic, human, personal and professional endeavors.  It allows attendees to initiate and produce films, to establish partnerships with film schools and festivals, to lead workshops, to export programs, to distribute films and resources on the Internet, etc. All of this is meant to shed light on and follow the development of this new technology.

It goes without saying that this new technology produces basic changes in each person’s relationship with their own image. These changes include such phenomena as “happy slapping,” whereby a scene is filmed unbeknownst to the subject, public displays of an individual’s private life, trivialization of violent images, and construction of new relationships with the world and with new powers having to do with the production of images for all.

But this camera can also be a formidable tool of expression.  It may actually end up becoming the principal audiovisual tool of expression. Artists have been using it to create totally unique and original work, which would never have been able to be produced with a regular camera.
For the past five years, the Festival has programmed 1,300 films made with cell phones throughout the world.

The Speaker

Author, filmmaker, and producer (Quidam Productions), Benoît Labourdette, founder and director of the Pocket Films Festival, writes and directs drama, documentaries, and experimental work for the cinema.
He teaches audiovisual arts at the graduate level at the University of Paris Sorbonne and also teaches at the University of Toulouse, the ISCPA Media Institute and the School of Fine Arts in Paris. With expertise in the field, he also supervises video editions of books.
In 2008 he published Make a Film with your Cell Phone, from the French publisher Dixit.

Program

Panorama of Films Made with Cell Phones (45 min.)
This selection of films chosen from the past six festivals highlights the diversity of approaches, the uniqueness of the work pertaining to the telephone as a cinematic tool and the quality of the films.
A new cinema coming into being . . .

Open Discussion led by Benoît Labourdette, in French or in English (30 minutes)
Do cell phones represent the future of cinema?
Very soon, every cell phone will have a camera. A camera that is not, after all, a camera.  Just as Meliès went and got a camera, a Lumière, in 1895 so that he could tell stories, filmmakers went and used cell phone cameras to tell stories, to make “authentic” spontaneous films that take us back to the very first image ever filmed.  Back, perhaps, to a certain essence of filmed representation.  Back, in fact, to film’s future.

This presentation will be illustrated, providing examples, concrete cases, and a short session on group filming.

Workshops - Beginning workshops, for ages twelve and above
The idea of the workshop is to explore the originality of the cell phone and the creative potential it opens up with the camera that is not, after all, a camera.

Topics of discussion: Hands-on demonstration, filming  (position of “the filmer” in relation to ”the filmee,” ethics, rights pertaining to an image, new subjects opened up by the technology) quality of image and sound, editing, etc.

Length of the workshop to be determined.

Links

www.festivalpocketfilms.fr / www.festivalpocketfilms.fr/english
http://www.wired.co.uk/videos/wired-people/2009-04/15/pocket-film-festival.aspx
http://www.quidam.fr/IMG/pdf/08-05-05_Entretien_avec_Benoit_Labourdette_-_Fluctuat.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwfNFQv14s&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ExVAfGMFK4&feature=related

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