A recent OFCOM study found that over 90% of young people tune into video-sharing platform and streamers and only spend a quarter of their viewing time on broadcast TV. It’s a fair guess then that the majority of the content they are watching has been generated on smartphones, which makes the SMart festival particularly timely.
A one-day celebration that ranges from no-budget DIY shorts to acclaimed features like Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Shin-Ching Tsou’s A Left-Handed Girl, it’s a clear demonstration that filmmakers are embracing bargain technology to create a new generation of moving imagery. It’s not just the low cost of shooting on smartphones that attracts first-time directors, it’s also the lightness and flexibility of the equipment. Where a full kit would attract attention, a handheld phone is such a ubiquitous sight as to pass almost unseen.
A full programme of short films and industry panels throughout the day are designed to inspire debate about the future of mobile technology. Victoria Mapplebeck’s award-winning documentary, Motherboard (pictured right) which was shot over 20 years, used five generations of smartphones to tell the story of her life as a single parent. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director and her son Jim Mapplebeck, who the film followed from conception into his teens.
SMart also celebrates Shin-Ching Tsou’s feature, A Left-Handed Girl, shot on iPhone 13 in a Taipei night market. The very smallness of the camera allowed the director to track her child actress as she ran between the stalls and kiosks. Co-written and edited by Sean Baker, who Shin-Ching Tsou has been working with for many years, the film marked her directorial debut. The screening will be followed by a pre-recorded Q&A with the director, hosted by filmmaker Victoria Mapplebeck.
Will audiences take away Tsou’s advice? “Learn more than one skill. You need to be able to write your own story and try to shoot your own story. And try to edit your own story. If you have these three basic skills, you don’t need anything. You don’t need money.”
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