Cellphone Cinema

Talk about exposure: At this year's Toronto International Film Festival, six fledgling filmmakers got excerpts of their work shown before every single film at the festival. And these trailers, made in conjunction with the festival's Talent Lab, were all created on mobile phones.

Cellphone cinema is still in its infancy – and judging from the reactions of the hundreds of cranky press members who watched the low-res trailers over and over again, it still has a long way to go. (You can judge for yourself here.)

But a number of emerging and established filmmakers are opening up to the new visual medium. Also in Toronto, Canadian maverick Guy Maddin unveiled "Nude Caboose," a 3-minute film about a shirtless conductor who forms, according to the festival, a "hilarious and mildly erotic party train" that was shot entirely on a cell phone. And earlier this year, South African artist Aryan Kaganof drew interest in his cellular feature film SMS Suger Man, the first on the mini-screen format to be blown up to the standard 35mm.

While the mobile phone's contribution to online media has mostly been opportunistic (see the popular YouTube bus argument "Bus Uncle"), new companies like MSpot and mFlix are getting into the act, supplying content to Sprint Nextel phones, while the Zoie Cellular Cinema Festival, the first festival devoted to mobile phone movies, is billing itself as a home for cellular content.