Digital Short Films (In Public/Digitopia/A Conversation with

The Korean Jeonju Film Festival commissioned three film-makers to make a film and only placed two restrictions on them: the length should be no more than thirty minutes and they had to film with a digital videocamera. Despite the very different results, all three films include moments in which the future of digital film becomes tangible. Digitopia by John Akomfrah is about a man who is torn back and forth between the digital and analogue world. He is desperately seeking love and tries to turn his digital relationship into a real relationship. The subject of his affections, a prostitute, is however less than enthusiastic.For In Public, Jia spent 45 days filming public places in the former mining town of Datung. The influence of capitalism on the town is clear: an old bus is now a restaurant, a railway station has suddenly been turned into a disco. Datung has become a town without a function, but despite the depression, the inhabitants remain optimistic.A Conversation with God is the most elusive of the three. Here Tsai Ming-liang searches for God, in a collage of lively images from the big city. We see a medium in trance, a river bank strewn with dead fish and a striptease. An exciting contemporary document.