Pocket Film

'A boy in his time' India's first pocket film

Script & Direction: P.R. Harikumar

As a result of the popularity gained by mobile phones in our society, the way of artistic expression is also being changed. Now onwards the mobile screen will be the main space where our cultural actions will be displayed properly. As part of this, the pocket films –short films made by or for mobile phones- took place in many countries like France and Canada. In 2005 , first pocket film festival was organized by Forum des Images in Paris. In October 2006 the second edition of the pocket film festival was also happened in Paris. Consequently, pocket film festivals were organized in San Francisco, Canada, Rome and Taiwan.

Now India gets its first pocket film from Kerala when P.R.Harikumar, a Malayalam professor of Sree Sankara College, Kalady, scripted and directed a pocket film named ‘A boy in his time’. It is a short film of 10 minutes completely shot and edited by a mobile phone. It deals with a story of a boy who lives in a flat without getting much attention and care from his parents. How he spends time in the room by interacting with the nature in an aquarium and with the entertaining materials.

The director of the film P.R.Harikumar says about his first attempt in visual media using mobile phone camera.
“I made this pocket film as part of my long search for finding out solutions for making available our own cultural content in mobile phones.

In my search for mobile solutions, at first, I went to the textual possibilities of mobile phone technology. As part of this, I made mobile editions of some classical literary works such as Ramayana in Malayalam and Thirukkural in Tamil.
Then I introduced, for the first time in India, the concept of phone novel by making a mobile edition of my own novel Neelakkannukal.

And now, I am exploring the visual possibilities of mobile phone technology. This pocket film named ‘A boy in his time’ was fully shot and edited by a mobile phone.
It will give inspiration, I think ,to the youth of India who have enough talent for making great contributions in the field of visual media. For, it gives them a new opportunity for expressing in video format without spending much money.

As you know, at present in our society no one can escape from the widespread influence of electronic gadgets like mobile phone. Then we have only one option for a better survival with our traditional values. Convert those gadgets in to cultural tools for our progress using its possibilities both textual and visual. As you know, that is what I am doing in recent days by making all these things like pocket cinema and phone novel.”

Watch Pocket Film