First Chinese cell phone film festival

There are many remarkable things in Xi'an, and we don't just mean the super-sized rats and colorful mobile phones. The first ever cell (mobile) phone film festival (or in Chinese here) is being held in Xi'an in September. Entries were being accepted as of Juy 8 and will continue on until August 25. The head of the jury is the Hong Kong indie film director Fruit Chan (陈果).

It seems that although official festivals of this sort are rare, there are plenty of sites (including the usual video sharing ones) that feature works made with various mobile phones. We found a section on the popular local website Metroer dedicated to just cell phone movies (well, some DV flicks seem to be on there, too). There are directions for how to enter and upload your film.

Making cell phone movies seems to be a cool thing to do these days. There's a CNN article on filmmakers who went out and made a feature with a cell phone camera -- the story link seems to be broken, but we did find the beginning of that article quoted on a blog. It seems that some Italians went out and made a feature length film with a cell phone.

Photo from Laifu.org.