To be a media consumer in 2025 is to shuttle between these two poles. On Sunday morning, you might watch a 4-hour director’s cut of Lawrence of Arabia on a tablet propped against a pillow. On Sunday afternoon, you will laugh at a 22-second pet video that has been viewed 80 million times.
Imagine a prompt: "Generate a short film in the style of Wes Anderson’s filmography, starring a cartoon cat, suitable for vertical viewing." AI video models (like Sora or Runway Gen-3) are already making this possible.
The future "portable filmography" may not be a list of works you consume, but a you remix. Your phone will host not just the videos, but the AI engine to generate new ones based on the popular tropes of the day.
Executives now ask, "How does this look on an iPhone screen?" The intimate close-up has become the default shot, replacing the expansive wide shot. Directors like Steven Soderbergh have fully embraced this, shooting films entirely on iPhones, acknowledging that the final destination of their filmography is a pocket.
Carry your filmography proudly. Watch your popular videos shamelessly. The screen is always on, the battery is charged, and the show never ends.
Consider the filmography of Akira Kurosawa. Thirty years ago, accessing his seven samurai meant a trip to a specialty video store. Ten years ago, it meant waiting for a Criterion Collection mailer. Today, his 30-film portfolio fits into a streaming queue on your iPhone, accessible on a subway commute or a lunch break.
Coupled with the explosion of —from TikTok micro-dramas to YouTube documentaries—the way we consume visual storytelling has been fundamentally rewritten. We no longer go to the cinema; the cinema follows us.
In the golden age of Hollywood, a “filmography” was a dusty tome found in a library, or a list of credits scrolling past at the end of a movie. In the early 2000s, it meant a shelf full of DVDs. But today, we are living in the age of the portable filmography —the ability to carry an entire director’s life’s work, an actor’s nuanced performances, or a genre’s definitive history in the palm of your hand.