Six filmmakers have been commissioned by the GSM Association and the Sundance Institute to create five short short films just for mobile handsets. The purpose of what's called the Sundance Film Festival: Global Short Film Project is to extend independent filmmaking to what the institute's president and founder Robert Redford refers to as "the 'fourth screen' medium, after television, cinema and computers."

The two organizations believe this is the first time independents have been given the task of of creating orginal stories for a mobile environment. All of the chosen directors for the pilot program have shown movies at the Sundance Film Festival in the past.

These include Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the two filmmakers behind the current release 'Little Miss Sunshine', in addition to Justin Lin ('Better Luck Tomorrow'), Maria Maggenti ('Puccini for Beginners'), Cory McAbee ('The American Astronaut') and Jody Hill ('The Foot Fist Way').

They've all been given a limited budget to create 3-5 minute short films for the ultra-small screen.

Redford added, "We feel this experiment embodies fully, our quarter-century dedication to exploring new platforms to support wider distribution of independent voices in filmmaking."

Sundance's director of programming & creative director John Cooper is overseeing The Global Short Film Project. Cooper said the project takes the institute "into the realms of a uniquely intimate new medium, one which holds tremendous promise for maximizing the impact and international reach of the short film genre, and in doing so serving the artists."

The premier of the short films is set to occur at next year's 3GSM World Congress, which takes place in February. Attendees will be able to download the films directly to their cell phones at the conference, with broader release occurring after when it is over.

There have been several recent developments to not just mobilize major motion pictures but to also get every-day folk to create and get their video-creations onto mobile phones and smartphones.

 Yesterday, reports said Verizon Wireless is in talks with Google to mobilize YouTube content through the carrier's V Cast multimedia service.

 In partnership with Paramount Pictures, Nokia is offering a full length version of Mission Impossible III' on a 512 MB miniSD card in a special bundle with the N93 camcorder smartphone. The movie runs at 25 frames per second in stereo on the mobile handset, and, as with a DVD, users can rewind, fast forward, and stop the movie when watching it on the phone's 2.4-inch QVGA (320 x 240 pixel) color screen.

 Actor and director Gary Oldman shot and posted a short-film called 'Donut' to promote the N93 camcorder phone in addition to a new video-sharing site called the Nokia Nseries Studio, itself designed to promote mobile movie making. Oldman's film features a round reflection of an inner tube in rippling water set to a soundtrack by a composer named Tor, while the site also features the work of number of other directors. Users can login and share their own clips, either from a PC or a mobile device, at Nokia Nseries Studio as well.

 For a few thousand dollars, including travel expenses, a pair of Italian filmmakers created a 93-minute movie, Nuovi Comizi D'Amore (New Love Meetings), with a Nokia N90 camera-smartphone. Directors Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi say it is the first full-length film to be shot with a mobile handset. The film is homage to a 1965 documentary Love Meetings by Pier Paolo Pasolini, which Interviewed people about their love lives. Mencarini and Seghezzi said they the N90 to find out what has changed in the intervening forty years.

Sprint, one of the first U.S. carriers to stream videos to phones, introduced mSpot Movies , a service that delivers full-length feature films to mobile handsets, last December. This past September, the operator introduced a first of its kind "pay-per-view" offering, called Sprint Movies, for mobile phones. There are important differences between the old and new services.