[Commlist] CFP: Smartphone Cinema: Asian Perspectives and Practices

CFP: Smartphone Cinema: Asian Perspectives and Practices

Zhaoyu Zhu and Xiaoge Xu

In contemporary media culture, the smartphone has transcended its 
original communicative function of phone calls and social media, 
becoming a legitimate and transformative apparatus for cinematic 
production and reception. In the realm of film production, this emerging 
practice represents a significant shift in the audiovisual landscape, 
moving mobile devices from amateur documentation to professional, 
industry-level film production (Schleser, 2021). By drastically reducing 
financial, logistical, and technical barriers to entry, smartphone 
technology enables independent filmmakers, marginalized creators, and 
students to produce industry-standard narratives without the need for 
expensive traditional studio equipment (Schleser & Baker, 2018; Zhu et 
al., 2025). In the realm of film reception, scholars argue that mobile 
media fundamentally alters traditional cinematic spectatorship by 
relocating the site of reception from the collective, darkened 
environment of the traditional theater to the private, portable space of 
the personal screen. This geographic relocation of cinema results in a 
highly individualized viewing experience, allowing audiences to consume 
media in dynamic, transitional, and everyday environments (Casetti, 
2015). Furthermore, receiving cinema on a smartphone introduces a unique 
haptic dimension to spectatorship. Because audiences physically hold and 
touch the screening device, the viewing experience becomes inherently 
tactile, collapsing the physical distance between the spectator and the 
screen that characterized classical film exhibition (Verhoeff, 2012).

This collection aims to explore how the creation and consumption of 
smartphone films are influencing the Asian media landscape. Over the 
last ten years, Asia has become the undeniable global centre of a 
mobile-first entertainment revolution, driven by widespread smartphone 
use, affordable mobile data networks, and a cultural shift toward 
consuming short, vertically formatted content. This trend is evident in 
numerous new developments across East Asia. Since the early 2010s, 
renowned East Asian directors such as Park Chan-Wook have begun using 
mobile devices to produce shorts (Schleser, 2021, p. 242). With the rise 
of short video platforms like TikTok, smartphones have freed the 
distribution of short films, which were previously limited to film 
festivals and theatres. Short films and episodic micro-dramas have 
exploded in popularity, reshaping the audiovisual industry landscape 
across Asia. This trend is especially notable in China, where 
micro-dramas designed for vertical viewing surpassed traditional film 
box-office revenues in 2025 and have also become transnational media 
products via apps like Reelshort (Tang & Wang, 2025).

Just echoing Raidel (2025)’s understanding of the future of Asian cinema 
as ‘crafts transformative aesthetic experiences that engage the senses, 
challenging hegemonic systems and redefining regional identity’, this 
edited collection understands that the smartphone opens an alternative 
yet constantly volatile space for film production and reception in Asia. 
This book illustrates that smartphone cinema is closely intertwined with 
Asia's unique mainstream cultures, such as Japan's anime, Korea's K-pop 
and webtoons, and India's Bollywood. Additionally, smartphone cinema is 
expected to evolve alongside emerging technologies like AI, leading to 
new business models and practices in film production and distribution. 
More imperatively, this
 book examines how smartphone filmmaking is reshaping what cinema is, 
how it is made, and who gets to tell stories within Asia’s highly 
mobile, platform-driven media cultures.

We seek contributions that:

•	Theorize smartphone cinema as both a technological practice and a 
cultural formation shaped by everyday mobility, social platforms, and 
new screen ecologies.
•	Analyze how smartphone filmmaking intersects with local genres, 
popular media, independent and experimental film traditions, and 
platform-specific media cultures.
•	Examine the implications of mobile-first creativity in contexts where 
smartphones are primary devices for shooting, editing, and viewing.

We especially welcome chapters that address one or more of the following 
areas:

1.	Asia-specific contexts

•	China: Platform governance, censorship, entrepreneurial identities, 
fandom, and evolving ideas of authorship and publicness in mobile video 
cultures.
•	India: Smartphone cinema amid diverse film and media ecosystems; 
questions of language, caste, class, gender, and region in mobile-based 
creativity.
•	Southeast Asia: Smartphone filmmaking in youth media, documentary, 
activism, and festival circuits; intersections of cinema, journalism, 
and social media.
•	Japan and South Korea: Smartphone cinema within advanced media 
environments, transmedia storytelling, media art, and multi-screen 
viewing cultures.

2.	Aesthetic and formal innovation

•	Handheld and intimate aesthetics, vernacular realism, and 
experimentation with low-light and ambient conditions.
•	Vertical and unconventional framing, with editing and sound techniques 
adapted for mobile viewing.
•	Purposeful use of smartphones for artistic, narrative, and political 
goals (e.g., diary films, activist documentation, personal archives).

3.	Platforms, labor, and economies

•	Platform-dependent visibility, algorithmic governance, and gatekeeping.
•	Precariousness and informal labor in smartphone-based creative work.
•	New forms of authorship, collaboration, and community-building among 
creators, influencers, and fans.

4.	Critical issues and power dynamics. We focus on work that goes beyond 
celebratory stories of “democratization” to examine:

•	Dependence on platforms and opaque algorithmic systems.
•	Aesthetic standardization influenced by trends, templates, and in-app 
tools.
 •	Surveillance, data collection, and privacy concerns in 
smartphone-based production and sharing.
•	Blurred lines among cinema, content creation, advertising, and 
self-branding, and their effects on authenticity, exploitation, and value.

The aim of the volume Smartphone Cinema: Asian Perspectives and 
Practices is to position Asian experiences and creative communities as 
central—not peripheral—to global debates on mobile media and film:

•	Develop a framework for understanding smartphone cinema in Asia as 
both a technological practice and a cultural phenomenon.
•	Demonstrate how strong mobile infrastructures, platform-driven 
environments, everyday mobility, and regional film traditions 
collectively reshape what is considered “cinema.”
•	Recenter Asia in film and media theory by using smartphone cinema as a 
space for rethinking contemporary screen cultures and power relations.

Submission Details: Please submit an abstract of 300–400 words along 
with a short bio (100–150 words) that outlines your proposed chapter’s 
focus, theoretical framework, methods, and empirical material.

Deadline for abstracts: June 30, 2026
Notification of acceptance: July 30, 2026

Full chapter length: 7,000 words in Chicago Style (the 
Notes-Bibliography System) Full chapter submission deadline: December 
31, 2026

The editors will collaborate with leading academic publishers on this 
proposed volume. So far, they have gained multiple successful 
experiences publishing books with international publishers such as 
Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and IGI Global.
Please send proposals and inquiries to: (zhaoyu.zhu /at/ nottingham.edu.cn); 
(xiaogexu /at/ zwu.edu.cn)

This volume invites contributions from scholars, practitioners, and 
practitioner-researchers in film studies, media studies, cultural 
studies, communication, and related areas. We especially welcome 
submissions that highlight underrepresented voices, marginalized 
communities, and non-metropolitan or vernacular practices within Asian 
smartphone cinema.

Co-Editors’ Bios:

Dr. Zhaoyu Zhu is a Teaching Fellow in Communication and Cultural 
Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. He received the 
Katherine Singer Kovacs Essay Award from the Society of Cinema and Media 
Studies in 2022. He is the author of Film Technology in Socialist 
Chinese Cinema: Cinematic Megamachine.

Dr. Xiaoge Xu is a professor of mobile studies and branding studies at 
the Sino- German Faculty of Branding, Zhejiang Wanli University. He is 
the editor of five books, the co-editor of one book, and the 
editor-in-chief of the IGI Global AWTT book series. He is the founder of 
Mobile Studies International, Mobile Studies Congress, and CICI Global.

References:

Casetti, F. (2015). The Lumière galaxy: Seven key words for the cinema 
to come. Columbia University Press.

Schleser, M., & Berry, M. (Eds.). (2018). Mobile story making in an age 
of smartphones. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Raidel, E. (2025). The Future of Asian Cinema: Navigating the Space 
Between Technology, Community, and Aesthetics: Clusters of Future 
Studies: Past and Futures; Post-Normality and Complexity; Technological 
Trends. In Future of Media in Asia: Artificial Intelligence, Digital 
Technology and Media Practice (pp. 107-118). Cham: Springer Nature 
Switzerland.

Tang, W., & Wang, Y. (2025). ReelShort as a New Template of 
International Short-drama Business: Platformisation, Glocalisation, and 
De-Westernised Practices. Global Media and China, 20594364251366414.

Verhoeff, N. (2012). Mobile screens: The visual regime of navigation. 
Amsterdam University Press.

Zhu, Z., Fan, Y., & Zhao, B. (2025). How does the Chinese smartphone 
brand attract New filmmakers to make films with their phones?. 
Continuum, 39(6), 815-832.

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