Bermuda’s Mobile Scene

My recent trip to Bermuda for their annual Film Festival may well have been my last (the family I have there might be moving off the island later this year). So now is as good a time as any to profile the mobile landscape on “The Rock”…

On my last stay in Bermuda I narrowly escaped the advancing hoardes of 3G iPhones. This time I wasn’t so lucky — Apple’s locked down JesusPhone arrived with complementary 3G service on Tuesday, March 26th.

The lucky exclusive carrier is M3 Wireless, appearing as “MOBILITY” on my handset. It works out nicely for me, as for some reason I can’t get a data connection at all using the island’s other GSM network, Digicel Bermuda (formerly AT&T).

And just like my experience in Tokyo last summer, the only iPhone I actually saw in the wild was in the window of a local shop. As Bermuda is populated largely by expat financial mucky mucks on work visas, BlackBerries are everywhere — though I did spy a native Bermudian with a Moto Ming a few years back.

Since Fido, my carrier here in Canada, charges 5¢/kB for international data I couldn’t really test the speed of Bermuda’s 3G network. Fortunately the diner down the road from my brother and sister in law’s place has free and ample WiFi, along with excellent banana pancakes.

BIFF 2009, Day 5: Short Films (Mostly) Suck

Such a bold statement is tantamount to heresy from this Film School Graduate, but hear me out…

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that if you want to make a feature, why waste time and resources on a short film that could be better spent on your ultimate goal?

Indeed, of the eight films that made up this year’s Bermuda Shorts Program two were actually good (with Rúnar Rúnarsson’s 2 Birds by far the best), one wanted desperately to be an action film (and failed miserably) and the rest were built upon a single revelation so arbitrary that it would make M. Night Shyamalan wince.

It also didn’t help that these films were pitted against each other in the same screening, encouraging the audience to pick favourites and boo the rest. And for the first time since I started attending the festival, there weren’t any local entries.

Could the 15-20 minute short film be a dying art form?

BIFF 2009, Day 4: Keep The Promise

From The Bermuda Film Festival website:

In September 2000, 191 governments committed to halve world poverty by 2015 and set eight goals to achieve this: the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). At the halfway point, eight directors were invited to share their vision of these major issues, each by way of a short film.

And here’s how effective those 8 short films were: As soon as the houselights came up I came straight home and signed up for an account at Kiva.org

I was more than a bit disheartened by the surprising number of Bermudians who left before the screening was over — most left after the particularly devastating profile of a dying AIDS victim. Their loss, clearly, as the hauntingly beautiful (and equally sad) The Story of Panshin Beka followed directly afterward.

The last short in the collection, by Wim Wenders, was contrived to the point of being silly — yet this was the very piece that introduced the audience to the idea of microfinance. And it’s kind of hard not to heed the call of developing world entrepreneurs speaking to you directly from the big screen.

8 should be required viewing. For everyone.