ABSTRACT
Filmmaking using mobile phone cameras (phone films) occupies ground currently contested by the potential nihilism of “movie-selfies”, and the narratively investigative aesthetic of the essay film. Thus, the phone film emerges as a sociocultural phenomenon, with its beginnings in a hybrid expressive/cultural process. Aspects of play, political and creative impulses contribute to participatory engagement in film festival environments, negotiating shifting ideas of identity construction as participants fluctuate between the roles of makers and spectators. Creative phone filmmaking practices align with notions of Barthesian jouissance: a disruptive pleasure in novelty that equates to a kind of Benjaminian shock of witnessing phone film images on the screens of mobile devices, legitimizing the mode of participation. Therefore, a central concern of the chapter is to investigate how seriously intended, novel (anti-professional) filmmaking serves to disrupt existing legitimizing factors, which are familiar in commercial film production. Finally, the chapter argues that the particular form of experiential exchange involved in making and watching phone films denotes ephemeral, sensuous and physical pleasures, demonstrating that experiencing phone films potentially occupies a discursive regime that embodies all three registers.
