The Alicante Smartphone Film Festival launched a series of free movie workshops as part of its Alicante Technology Forum program. The initiative aims to engage thousands of local students, with sessions taking place at Plaza de Toros, Puerta Ferrisa, and MARQ. The first workshop, focused on character animation, has been fully registered and ready to run.
Throughout the week, young people from Alicante will have access to a variety of practical sessions. Topics include drone shooting with smartphones, photography, pixelation, music video creation, rotoscoping, experimental animation, and cinematic launches. The instructing team includes Sami Natsheh and Arly Jones from Cabeza Voladora animation studio, Alfredo Navarro, a Goya Award winner for the documentary Salted Dreams, and Roberto Ruiz de Zafra, a renowned photographer and camera operator.
The festival kicks off this Wednesday at 20:00 with the screening of selected first short films, featuring one of the top 150 submissions in the competition held at Plaza de Toros.
technology forum
The Alicante Technology Forum, sponsored by the City Council, opened to a crowd of about 900 attendees in a session held Tuesday at the ADDA Auditorium. The event featured technology promoter Mark Vidal delivering the keynote on whether the future can be reached in time.
Vidal offered an analysis of a society in transformation and highlighted four strategic keys to addressing digital challenges. The changes emphasize using data to create better customer experiences, leveraging artificial intelligence, improving business processes for efficiency, turning products into services, shaping new business models, and enabling human talents that machines cannot replicate. He noted that humans retain creative, imaginative, intuitive, emotional, and growth-oriented capacities that current machines lack.
Championship play a game
The ATF Battle Arena Championship began with teams competing in Valorant, a shooter and strategic game, at Plaza de Toros. Eight teams, each with up to 48 players, will advance through quarterfinals, semifinals, and the final rounds.
In parallel, the Technology Fair presented by the Alicante City Council showcased a range of innovative companies and projects. Attendees could explore demonstrations from local enterprises, test emerging technologies, and learn about research initiatives from nearby universities and science parks.