Recently, mobile films, made with phone cameras, are emerging as a new form of cinema. These films create alternative styles of representation and modes of reception. How do mobile films change the cultural form of cinema?This paper first analyzes their style of audio-visual images: the low-definition images, unique camera movement, and loss of distancebetween camera and subject that brings a new kind of realism to filmic representation. Second, this paper considers the audio-visual environment. By viewing images on a mobile phone, the spectators’ audio-visual sense is fused with their tactual sense. Using the mobile phone as a linguistic shifter, the meanings of images change in accordance with the context of reception. Furthermore, these images circulate and are shared within the web space. Third, this paper points to the formal similarities of mobile film and early film. The relation between the styles of the attraction and showing, as well as the dynamic and multiple forms of their reception in early cinema, resonates with the relation between mobile films’ representation and their reception. The above considerations provide a new approach to the history of cinema.
