With more and more mobile phones now including digital cameras and video recording capability, I suppose it was only a matter of time until people began making films using nothing more than their phone. The port city of Yokohama Japan recently played host to the first ever cell phone camera film festival.

The Pocket Films Festival featured 48 movies, all of which were shot using only cell phone video cameras. Even more surprisingly, the 48 films presented at the festival were selected from over 400 international entries.

And although the cell phone video cameras tend to provide low to medium quality grainy footage, the films accepted to the festival proved that cell phone films could be personal and evocative in a way that is rarely seen with big Hollywood productions. The overall winner of the international contest was a five-minute short entitled “Thumb Girl,” a provocative and personal entry by Japan’s Yuka Kojima.

While cell phone film footage is about as low-tech as you can get within the film industry, the cell phones offer an intimacy that is simply not possible with a large camera and crew. For example, many of the films contain clips of extreme close-ups or running through city streets, with cars and buildings flying by in a blur.

So are we witnessing the birth of a new art form? Experts say, “Possibly.” The intimacy and unobtrusiveness of the cell phone makes it an ideal medium to capture real-life in all its whimsy and glory. The cell phone is something we now carry everywhere we go, every day of our life, making it an ideal type of journal to record anything and everything, from the most mundane of daily events, to the grandiose and tragic.

But while film buffs are already beginning to get excited about the new medium of cell phone cinema, these “pocket-sized” movies are still largely unknown beyond the realm of serious film geeks. Will they find appeal with a mass audience? Probably not — at least not right away.

But as technology progresses, and the video capabilities of mobile phones improve, the cell phone film phenomena may find greater acceptance among the general public. One huge advantage of shooting a film yourself on your cell phone: it’s dirt cheap to produce. For this reason, a cell phone film that earns even $1000 can be seen as a great success. After all, when you have no overhead, any profit you make is gravy, right?

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