Last Thursday 20 March saw the opening of the smART Mobile Phone Festival at Cinema Radio theatre in Downtown Cairo.
The British Ambassador to Cairo, James Watt, attended the opening of the festival which was supported by the British Embassy in Cairo to celebrate the art of filmmaking using the mobile phone camera. The long-awaited film Underground / Above Ground by the Egyptian director Salma al-Tarzi was screened.
On the sideline of the festival, a number of workshops were organised in Cairo, Alexandria, Minya and Assiut where some 90 to 120 participants took part in training courses on the technique of shooting and editing films on mobile phones.
An open invitation was directed to the filmmakers in the Arab world to make a one-minute film to be produced individually.
The jury members chose a list of some 55 films to be screened in the “Downtown Festival of Contemporary Art” which runs till 10 April.