Mechanical Love

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro hit the headlines last year when he created an eerily lifelike android, and his fascinating story is told in the documentary Mechanical Love.

“Mechanical Love” is a documentary on the interrelationship between robots and humans. The film portrays people who have a close relationship with a robot, and it takes us from the high temple of robot technology, Tokyo, Japan, to Braunschweig, Germany, to Italy and back to Copenhagen, Denmark. By this world tour director Phie Ambo seeks to highlight the human need for love and our craving to be loved by others – perhaps the two most important aspects of life. Through the main characters, she examines the cultural differences in how we accept emotional robots in the East and the West

Read more about ‘Mechanical Love’

trailer here

Spike Demo Mobile Film

Spike Lee has teamed up with Nokia in an attempt to “democratize film” by developing a movie based entirely out of user-submitted cellphone footage. The film will focus on “the way music tells the story of humanity” and consist of three acts based on “assignments” posted on the project website. After an assignment has been announced, participants will have four weeks to develop their submission.

If you want to try your luck—text, music, video and photo submissions are being accepted between now and August 21st. Nokia will choose 25 submissions at which point website visitors will whittle the candidates down to 10. Spike will personally choose the winners from each act. Nokia Productions [via Gizmodo]

David Lynch Ipod ad provokes fair to middling rant

This may be funny, intentionally provocative, tongue-in-cheek, whatever, but thanks to the slow moving UK film educators and the system in which they are bound this attitude is rife, even among younger filmmakers. The only platform for them is still cinema and they are often clearly threatened not intrigued, by the expanded possibilities of this new dynamic mobile production and exhibition technology. Since Pocket Shorts began in 2004 a number of dedicated mobile phone film festivals and production schemes have sprung up but reactionary attitudes remain. So as its stands, I feel it’s more likely that we will see groundbreaking film coming from the generation with an intimate connection to their video mobiles. Those who have taught themselves to use their phones not for Art but to create more organic, instinctive and immediate forms of expression. Those who document then share their work for free. Unwittingly they leave those filmmakers with their minds set by training, who are seduced, saturated and stuck rehashing tired themes and obediently adopting the attitudes of the dead.

Pocket Shorts

MOViEs

Mobile Movies

Michel Gondry mobile phone filmmaker

Check out the brilliant 60-second short created by Oscar winning director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Motorola; includes exclusive behind the scenes footage and designs from Gondry’s sketch book.