Small File Media Festival

Series 1

October 20 / 7:00pm

Lo Rez Skylines / Solarpunk Futures

“Lo Rez Skylines / Solarpunk Futures” lives beyond the barriers of digital perfection. These works seep through blockchained spheres of surveillant media to drip neon pixels into the eye of the 4K panopticon. – J. Malbon

Series 2

October 21 / 10:00am

Tiger Tiger

A sense of foreboding arises across brooding landscapes, embracing you in a susurrating murmur and a seductive pixel caress. The ingenuity of small-file aesthetics glimmers darkly in these velvet-pawed, sharp-clawed experimental works. —Laura U. Marks

Small File Filmmaking Workshop Showcase 

In May 2023, The Cinematheque’s Learning & Outreach team hosted a two-day workshop on small-file filmmaking practices. All levels of experience were welcome, and participants went through the entire process, from storyboarding to shooting to editing to compressing, in one weekend. — Chelsea Birks

City in Bloom
Canada 2023 | Anastasia Samkova, Sunoj Subhagan, Heller, Jay Parnell | 2 min. | 2.48 MB

When Were We Going?
Canada 2023 | Samuel Albert, Winona Gillera, Ningzi Xu, Weijun Zhu, Mickey Semera | 3 min. | 2.57 MB

Present Connections
Canada 2023 | Anker Vanderkuip, Chelsea McNamara, Maddie Wahl, Robb Cannon | 2 min. | 1.86 MB

Standoff
Canada 2023 | Lucy Layton, Emilie Paco, Josiah Belchior | 4 min. | 3.85 MB

A Tale of Two Lives
Canada 2023 | Anastasia Samkova | 1 min. | 1.8 MB

Series 3

October 21 / 12:30pm

A Certain Feeling for the Universe

A poetics of longing, this program comprises textural films that open our vision through dense abstraction and deep meditations on nostalgic objects, diffused by sojourns both meaningful and pointless. To grasp just one piece of the universe is to draw nearer to the infinite than if you were trying to hang on to the whole thing. —Yani Kong

Rings of Saturn

At the threshold between cosmic and commonplace, this playful selection wields speculation and spectacle to nudge the viewer toward new off-world imaginaries. —Joni Schinkel

The Voyage That Came to Be
Canada 2023 | Kofi Oduro (Illestpreacha) | 3 min. | 4 MB

Sunset Melt; melting mmeeelllttt. ing, fire inferno fourth ring. Demons in my.… 
Canada 2023 | Dizzy Freehan | 1 min. | 952 KB

Powers of Ten (at 16px x 16px)
USA 2022 | Chris Collins | 4 min. | 1 MB

Jupiter’s Ghost
USA 2023 | Andrew Roach | 21 min. | 5.3 MB

A Simple Machine for Living
Canada 2023 | Monique Motut-Firth | 5 min. | 5.1 MB

The Process of Rotting
Canada 2023 | Sophia Biedka | 7 min. | 7.3 MB

Series 4

October 21 / 2:30pm

Shards of Crystalism

Paying homage to a group of Sudanese conceptualists, who in 1976 published their visionary ​“Crystalist Manifesto” in Khartoum’s Al-Ayyam newspaper, this program strings together movies that contain ​“a crystal that extends endlessly within.” Lingering over surfaces—looking at and through the crystal—and alternating between semblance and essence, the films create a relay between the finite and the infinite. In the words of the Crystalist school, ​“We painted the crystal, we thought about the crystal, and so the Crystalist vision came to be.” —Radek Przedpełski

Silent Running

These small-file movies give a shout-out to their beloved ancestor, early cinema. Sallying forth into a new-old medium, they experiment as though for the first time with fantastical narratives, faux-naïf performance, the poetry of intertitles, and a dark glint of the gothic. —Laura U. Marks