Spike Lee does the mobile thing

Spike Lee is still big--it's the pictures that got small. This week the acclaimed independent filmmaker announced a partnership with Nokia to produce a multimedia film assembled from user-generated mobile content--the handset giant says the project will spotlight "the way music tells the story of humanity," with entrants encouraged to submit various combinations of text, music, images and video clips for consideration in the finished product. Lee will direct the film digitally via the Nokia Productions website and critique submissions as they are entered--online assistant directors will additionally assist participants in revising and reposting their entries for consideration. Lee will select the winning entries integrated into the completed film, which is scheduled to premiere this fall at Club Nokia in Los Angeles.

What makes Lee the perfect choice to helm a project created from user-generated content is the profoundly personal dimension of movies like Do the Right Thing, 25th Hour and When the Levees Broke--no other major filmmaker of his generation has produced a body of work so deeply rooted in the contemporary American experience, ignited by a political and social conscience largely absent from the Hollywood mainstream. Time and again Lee has approached his craft from a perspective not dissimilar from the emerging UGC aesthetic: He writes, directs and produces his projects, and sometimes co-stars in them. He sets most of his pictures in his native Brooklyn, and regularly casts family and friends in key roles both behind and in front of the camera--sister Joie Lee has appeared in nine of his films, character actor John Turturro in eight and superstar Denzel Washington in four, while composer Terence Blanchard has scored almost all of his features from 1991's Jungle Fever onward. Most important, Lee's films reflect his own passions and preoccupations, chief among them race, class and identity. In essence, he's capturing life the way he perceives it--and isn't that what user-generated content is all about?

In the press release accompanying the Nokia announcement, Lee makes a bold prediction: "In five years, I believe we will be watching films in movie theaters that have been shot on a mobile phone," he says. "Today, with state-of-the-art multimedia devices like what Nokia has to offer, you are seeing firsthand the democratization of film. Aspiring filmmakers no longer have to go to film school to make great work. With a simple mobile phone, almost anyone can now become a filmmaker." Given how few consumers are interested in viewing films on mobile devices in the here and now, it seems like a huge stretch to believe moviegoers of the future would ever pay to watch cellphone productions on the big screen, but the media democratization that mobile promises is very real. The challenge now facing Lee: Creating a film that transcends the limits of mobile content and approaches the heights of mobile art. Just because the screen is small doesn't mean the aspirations can't be big. - Jason