Dermot Carmody
Now in its fourth year, the Dublin Smartphone Film Festival takes place from January 30th to February 6th. Like everything at the moment the format of the festival is affected by the current pandemic and resultant lockdown, but the organisers were determined to honour their commitment to showcasing the best Smartphone filmmakers from around the world. The festival features work created exclusively using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This year’s virtual event online will screen a number of short films, documentaries, animations and music videos. There will also be workshops online covering story writing and scripting as well as the all-important topic of how to raise funding for projects using kickstarter.
The Dublin Smartphone Film Festival will be handing out its 2021 awards too. There are over 200 entries for these from 25 countries in categories such as Best Fiction, Music Video, Documentary, Animation, and Best Irish, with entries restricted to no longer than 15 minutes in length. The festival has teamed up with SV Assets and tech site Goosed.ie to provide prizes and gifts for the winners.
The festival was founded by Robert Fitzhugh, a filmmaker who has previously worked for the Reel World Film Festival in Canada and more recently as part of the PR and marketing team for the Fingal Film Festival.
“We just could not believe the success of the festival in the past three years,” admits Fitzhugh. “We sell out each year before the doors even open. It really demonstrated to us just how popular the notion of Smartphone Filmmaking has become. This year is unfortunately going to be a little different. It doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be great. The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have brought about an incredible period of creativity with people forced to use the tools they have at their disposal to tell stories. As a result we have seen an increase in submissions and the quality has moved forward at a phenomenal rate. Despite the situation we all find ourselves in there has never been a more interesting time to explore Smartphone filmmaking. This is what the Dublin Smartphone Film Festival is here to do; to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to create their stories using their phones and to provide them with a platform to present these stories to a wider audience”
The programme has many intriguing entries from around the world, and looks set to celebrate the creative ingenuity of filmmakers within the constraints of pandemic restrictions. For example UK director Coady Kearsley’s short comedy, Flimsy, which was filmed in isolation under quarantine with 13 actors in five countries.
The Dublin Smartphone Film Festival takes place from the 30th of January to the 6th of February on XERB.TV
Quick video for the event
https://youtu.be/XonRYsNorso
Tickets are 5 euro per screening or 15 euro for access to all short films
https://xerb.tv/channel/dublinsmartphonefilmfestival2021/virtual-events
You can find out more information on their website https://www.dublinsmartphonefilmfestival.com/
And you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.
