Watch the Emoji Story - available to watch at any time during the festival, then join producer Jennifer 8. Lee for a Q&A about her work with Emojination.
In The Emoji Story, Directors Martha Shane and Ian Cheney lead viewers 👀 on a deep dive into the ever evolving world of picture characters, from their humble beginnings in Japan 🇯🇵 to mobile keyboards 📱 the world 🌎 over, and shed fresh light 💡 on the Unicode Consortium 👥, which approves new emoji offerings and the individuals fighting ✊ to make the language more representative of its billions of users.
The rapid rise 📈 of emoji is a global 🌍 phenomenon without precedent. Their widespread use has prompted difficult questions 🤔 about the creation of a language and digital communication’s fraught ties 😣 to identity and inclusion.
Since the documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival as Picture Character, it has gone on to screen globally.
As entertaining as it is thought-provoking, The Emoji Story provides an engaging, conversational starting point for understanding the role that technology companies — specifically in Silicon Valley — have in the representation of communities across the diversity of the world. While society often emphasizes the importance of representation of the Big Screen of Hollywood, The Emoji Story movingly explains the power of representation on the Small Screen, on mobile devices that billions of people hold in their hands every single day.
We plan on partnering with teams like Adobe to develop Diversity and Inclusion in technology material to be distributed as a curriculum for technology companies and educational institutions.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:At our live session, if there is a small crowd, the Q&A session may include more of a talk about the process of putting together the documentary and advocating for emoji additions instead of fielding questions. We're happy to wrap up earlier as well. If the crowd is quite large, there may only be time for a few questions since we prefer to give thorough answers.
What is the goal and/or outcome of your session?:We want to share our documentary and facilitate a conversation about the creation of a global language. While society often emphasizes the importance of representation of the Big Screen of Hollywood, The Emoji Story movingly explains the power of representation on the Small Screen, on mobile devices that billions of people hold in their hands every single day.
We also offer opportunities for people to advocate for the additions of emoji they find important and would love to connect with new people through MozFest.
We'd like multi-way screening availability.
Jennifer 8. Lee is an emoji activist, documentary producer, a former New York Times reporter, and CEO of Plympton, a literary studio that innovates in publishing.