Are You Texting to Me???

Would Robert De Niro be any less sinister and disturbing if he drove a Mini Cooper in Taxi Driver? Would his performance in Raging Bull be any less powerful if he were just four feet tall and the movie renamed Raging Calf?

Probably not, which may be just one reason why the Tribeca Film Festival has decided to mix mobile media in with its film offerings this year as it kicks off its fifth festival today in New York City. The popular film fest was launched in 2002 Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff after the attacks on the World Trade Center to help economically and culturally revitalize Lower Manhattan through an annual celebration of film, music, and culture.

The festival’s mission is to help filmmakers reach the broadest possible audience, enable the international film community and the general public to experience the power of film, and to promote New York City as a major filmmaking center, says it's Web site. Mobile media can fulfill that promise by delivering clips and shorts to a massive worldwide audience, as well as to those lucky enough to be attending the event, which kicks off today and wraps up May 3rd with an awards ceremony.

In its first five years, the festival attracted over one and a half million attendees from the US and abroad and created more than $325 million in economic activity for New York City, says Tribeca Film Festival organizers.

Mobile media content will be channeled to mobile phones Verizon Wireless as well as on broadband Internet and FiOS, Verizon's rapidly expanding fiber network that is positioned to compete with conventional cable television systems.

Tribeca Film Festival wireless content will include three current festival full-length feature films, three short films, 49 movie trailers and three short films created exclusively for mobile users.

Obviously, we think the made-for-mobile media stuff is the most exciting since this represents the future of mobile media, which will eventually evolve from a world of mostly re-purposed and sliced-and-diced content into content that is specifically made for mobile mass audiences and mobile devices.

This is not the first time that a major film festival has dabbled in mobile media. In 2001, the Sundance Film Festival experimented with mobile wireless, although the technology wasn't quite ready to meet expectations. Fiver years later, Robert Redford and the Sundance group launched the Global Short Film Project to showcase short films and channel them to mobile devices. A good effort, but still something that falls short when it comes to taking full advantage of the location-aware and personal aspects of mobile systems.

The Tribeca Film Festival is taking it a step further by zapping out notices of private film screenings to mobile devices and sending mobile barcodes to these devices that can later be scanned for user admittance. Text-based movies reviews are also available to mobile users.

We think all of this is a move in the right direction. What do you think?