A very successful addition to the Dublin film festival calendar last year, the Dublin Smartphone Film Festival will be making a return later this month. Created by former Film In Dublin contributor a Robert Fitzhugh, showcases mobile storytellers. The festival’s mission is to encourage the next generation of filmmakers to share their stories and to provide them with a platform to present these stories to a wider audience and last year also featured several Film In Dublin writer’s among its judging panel. The programme for the festival is available now, and will include a wide selection of phone-made films from Ireland and abroad.
Dublin Smartphone Film Festival is now in its second year. Ireland’s only International Film Festival dedicated to filmmakers exclusively using mobile devices (Phones & Tablets) takes place later this month on the 26th January. The festival will screen a selection of short films, documentaries, animations and music videos, along with an educational workshop.
With over 100 entries from more than 25 countries, Awards Categories include Best Fiction, Music video, Documentary, Animation, and Best 360/VR film with entries restricted to no longer than 15 minutes in length. The festival programmers have assembled an outstanding program with strong original concepts and inventive use of the technology. This year festival organisers have teamed up with the following smartphone equipment manufacturers; Feiyutech Ireland, Shoulderpod, Alight Motion and LumaTouch to provide prizes for their category winners.
The Dublin Smartphone Film 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. Speaking about the festival, friend of the site Rob had this to say:
“We just could not believe the success of the festival in its first year. We sold out before the doors even opened. It really demonstrated to us just how popular the notion of Smartphone Filmmaking has become. This year its been even bigger. We doubled our submissions and the quality in just one year has moved forward at a phenomenal rate. With Smartphone films like Stephen Soderbergh’s UNSANE (now part of mainstream cinema) 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 Dublin Smartphone Film Festival will be taking place in the Teeling Whiskey Distillery in New Market on the 26th of January from 07:30pm to Late. Tickets for the festival are 15 euro and are available now here.
Press release courtesy of Dublin Smartphone Film Festival