New Film Awards ‘calls’ for mobile phone users

Media creation and distribution is evolving rapidly, with the “contrived reality” genre dominating traditional mass media and a new groundswell of home-grown media produced on personal digital devices and distributed by email and the World Wide Web quickly evolving. With the device-formerly-known-as-the-mobile-phone quickly evolving into a multimediavideo/image/sound recorder, Siemens has come up with a novel way of promoting its SX-1 mobile phone with inbuilt “camcorder” functionality by sponsoring a new award category for budding and established film makers at the St Kilda Film Festival. The video-equipped mobile phone is likely to become an important conduit for creativity in the future, and Siemens’ promotion of a new category for 90 second micro-movies shot with a Siemens SX1 mobile phone is a portent if things to come.

The new award has attracted interest from over 100 filmmakers in Australia, New Zealand and Asia and is called the Siemens Micro Movie Award. Over the past month directors have risen to the challenge of making a 90 second movie with hundreds of SX1 mobiles having been distributed internationally, piquing the interest and creativity of many movie makers.

There are no restrictions with regard to what you can use for editing, however, the film sequences in the finished piece must be longer than any subsequently integrated animation elements.

Entries have now closed for the festival, and later this month, ten films will be nominated as finalists for the competition after all entries have been received.

The nominated micro movies will be shown on screens located in cinema foyers during the St Kilda Film Festival and also be shown on the large cinema screen. Each of the finalists will receive a Siemens S65 mobile phone and will be invited to participate in a two day workshop during the festival with a notable Australian filmmaker. The winning Micro Movie will be chosen by an audience vote. The St Kilda Film Festival will be held from May 24-29, 2005.