I’d like to organize a Festival of Home Movies! It could
be wonderful — thousands of the things… You might find an odd genius, a
Fellini or Godard of the home movie, living in some suburb. I’m sure
it’s coming… Using modern electronics, home movie cameras and the like,
one will begin to retreat into one’s own imagination. I welcome that…

J.G. Ballard, quoted in ‘Interview with JGB by Graeme Revell’, RE/Search No. 8/9, 1984.

Simon Sellars of the excellent Ballardian and HarperCollins UK have made it so. They suggest the mobile phone’s videocam is the contemporary incarnation of Ballard’s ‘modern electronics’, and provides "an unprecedented window into inner space." The films should be no more than a minute in duration, and a Dogme-like approach to post-production i.e. let’s have none of that. Prizes are plenty of lovely books, including Ballard’s forthcoming autobiography. All the information you need is at Ballardian.com.

Let’s see if there’s more to this than happy slapping. And of course slow pans across the grimy Westway.

1st Ballardian Festival of Home Movies