5th Mobile Motion Film Festival – A Kosmic Success!
When I was a young boy, I used to watch a children’s program on the BBC called Mr Benn. In the show, Mr Benn would visit a costume shop and the owner would recommend a costume. Mr Benn would try the costume on and then step through a door and find himself in an adventure, related to the costume.
When the adventure was over, he would return to the shop and remove the costume and be returned to normality. But on returning to his ordinary street, somehow how everything seemed a bit different for an unexplained reason.
And this is how I generally feel after another MoMo festival is over. For two days we live a hyperreal, exciting adventure, hoping everything will go roughly according to plan. Then suddenly it’s over and we are back home again. Everyone outside is going about their daily lives, as if nothing has happened, but somehow everything looks different in some unexplainable way…
MoMo 5!
So that was it! Our fifth year is done. We made some small changes and they seemed to pay off. All the talks and screenings were well attended (the screenings and brunch were sold out).
All the people we spoke to said this was the best year so far and that the films had really improved in quality. We were no longer talking just about smartphone films, but simply films and stories. There was plenty for the audience to think about and hard decisions to be made regarding their choice for the audience prize.
Most of the filmmakers made it to the festival, from as far away as Canada, Russia, France and Italy, as well as local filmmakers from Switzerland.
Winners
Mobile Motion Film Festival 2019 WINNERS
- BEST TRAVEL VIDEO: Opening The Door by Giordano Cagnin
- BEST FICTION: Maria on a Wire by Christophe Granger
- BEST DOCUMENTARY: Teta, Opi & Me by Tara Hakim
- BEST SWISS: Hunger by Rob Schneider & Michel Wild
- YOUNG TALENT: A Pair Of Horns by Saleh Kashefi
- BEST SCREENPLAY: Salamoon by Ashkan Chavoshi
- GRAND JURY: Maria on a Wire by Christophe Granger
- AUDIENCE CHOICE: Teta, Opi & Me by Tara Hakim
Thanks to our Award Sponsors!
Thanks to our Award Sponsors, each winner received a Moondog Labs anamorphic lens and a Sennheiser AMBEO Smart Headset.
Thanks also to our Award Sponsors on Patreon for making the festival possible and for being at the festival to present their award for their nominated category.
Long time supporter and Silent Eye actor, Paul Anderson presented the award for Best Fiction. Another long time supporter, Sunny Lazic was there to present the award for Best Documentary.
If you would like to sponsor an award category next year, you can do so by selecting the correct tier on Patreon.
Thanks also to all our other patrons and supporters. We must also thank our volunteers, Francisco and Skel, and our jury, including David who helped host the award night presentation. Plus big thanks to our MoJo panel and host – Rob Holub, Claudia Stahel, Marcel Anderwert, Phil Jaycob – for creating such a fun and interesting talk.
Big thanks also to the Kosmos staff and engineers who did an amazing job and we’re so happy to have found the perfect venue for MoMo too.
We got it covered
Both Andrea and I are wearing about 10 hats each. In my case, I’m festival director, film director, poster and artwork designer, website designer, blogger, designing and animating the between films titles and so on… and this includes being able to project everyone’s short films onto a cinema screen (with the help of the Kosmos technicians).
“Never before has it been possible for filmmakers to create films of such high quality with essentially no crew and no “professional” equipment…”
The rise of organic filmmaking
What was interesting to see what the growth in a real movement in what I’ve started calling “organic filmmaking”.
Our Best Fiction and Grand Jury Prize was won by a director who simply wrote a story and asked his partner (who never before acted) to play the only character in the film. The film was then shot in their home, sometimes while their children were watching TV in another room. No other crew involved.
The Best Travel video was won by a filmmaker who started filming in Cuba without an intention to make a film of it, only deciding later to construct into a film – a solo effort. Best Documentary and Audience Choice was won by a filmmaker who filmed her grandparents while visiting them – no other crew involved.
Robot Attack was filmed by a dad who simply wanted to have fun with his 2 sons making a movie. Again, no other crew were involved.
We could list most of the MoMo selections this year as following a similar spontaneous approach to storytelling. So we are really seeing smartphone filmmaking as a movement separate from all previous forms. Never before has it been possible for filmmakers to create films of such high quality with essentially no crew.
Time after time, while watching these films, I had to remind myself they were made with zero funding and often only the director with a smartphone and some helpful family members to play a part or two.
In the 1960s, a film called Cathy Come Home launched the career Ken Loach, a director who has been a rare successful British filmmaker ever since. To my eyes, our Grand Jury winner Maria on a Wire is of equal proficiency, except Cathy Come Home took a BBC technical team and equipment that would still be out of reach to most of today.
Put them 2 side by side and I suspect our iPhone winner would come out looking the more polished of the two.
And so to MoMo… 6…
So that’s it for another year. Incredible to think we have been running the festival for half a decade and have met so many great people in that time. It’s always a huge thrill when people come from all over the world to be at our small event.
Yesterday, we held our first smartphone filmmaking workshop. Today we are at our laptops at 8am, writing emails, and going over festival number 5 so we can make things even better for festival number 6. No rest day required… well, maybe in a few days.
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