Associate Professor Max Schleser is an award-winning filmmaker with expertise in immersive media, documentary film and creative arts 4.0 with a focus on cinematic VR and interactive filmmaking. His research explores screen production, emerging media and smartphone filmmaking for community engagement, creative transformation and transmedia storytelling.
Max’s experimental films, moving-image arts and cinematic VR projects are screened at film festivals, in galleries and museums. He is Co-Founder of the Mobile Innovation Network & Association and Screening Director of the International Mobile Innovation Screening & Festival. He conceptualised and conducted mobile storytelling workshops for a number of city councils and cultural organisations in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
The Mobile Innovation Network and Association is the longest-running smartphone film festival in the southern hemisphere. The research explores smartphone filmmaking’s continuous innovation, aesthetic refinement and interactions with the most significant questions in the year 2021; the climate crises and creating stories during COVID-19. The curation addressed these through four dedicated screening programs. Situated at the intersection of Digital Media, Film and Screen Production, the research analyses novel screen storytelling practices, including the development towards feature smartphone filmmaking with the screening of One Punch and an online exhibition of mobile 360 videos, mobile cinematic VR & AR projects. As a networking project MINA develops a platform, affinity space and community of practice to enable knowledge transfer and explore current developments in this fast moving-field. The festival is a reflection on the transformation of smartphone filmmaking in 2022 and simultaneously Max Schleser continues to situate smartphone filmmaking the domain of moving-image arts and experimental screen production to provide an intervention to an industry dominated discourse. His curation focused on establishing opportunities for a polyphony of voices to enter contemporary screen culture. As a response to COVID-19 the event was developed into a hybrid festival, including screenings via the platform Xerb.tv.
MINA: www.mina.pro
Max’s show-reel: www.schleser.nz | Behance