Small File Media Festival 2020
The First Annual Small File Media Festival celebrates low-bandwidth movies that stream with no damage to the planet! Streaming video has an alarmingly high carbon footprint: it’s the cause of about 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
But these movies at under 5 megabytes each—about the size of a small PDF file—show that great cinema doesn’t have to mean great big files.
We received over 100 submissions from around the world. Artists found many ways to work with thesmall-file constraint. Animation! GIFs! Low frame rates! Datamoshing! Still images with sound! Movies made with “obsolete” technologies! Websites! Executable files! Very short movies! And movies creatively compressed into small files. We’ve got narrative, documentary, and experimental movies. We’ve got cat videos! We’ve got porn—because streaming porn is responsible for 0.3% of greenhouse gas emissions!
Festival co-organizer Sophia Biedka says, “As an independent filmmaker, I really respect the inventiveness and ingenuity of these makers.” “Small-file movies can be a little hard to see,” admits festival founder Laura Marks, “but you can feel them!” Media activist and festival co-organizer Joey
Malbon says, “It's five megabytes of fun!” Our programming committee, which also includes artist Faune Ybarra, media scholar Radek Przedpełski, and IT engineer Alejandro Rodriguez-Silva, is curating all these tiny movies into aesthetically satisfying thematic programs.
Programs will be hosted on our Vimeo platform August 10-20, by paying a $1 membership and optional donation. Donations will support the Second Annual Small File Media Festival. All artists receive a rental fee.
OFFICIAL SELECTION
All It Takes
Curated by Faune Ybarra · 15 min.
Alternative narratives of what hasn’t happened (yet).
This program is 24.8 MB.
- 1.5 MB
Unstacking
- 2.48 MB
Self Portrait
- 1.5 MB
You Know the One
- 2 MB
Melt
- 2.6 MB
Exhaust
- 788 KB
The Passing
- 4.3 MB
Stanza
- 5.67 MB
Once Upon a Time
- 1.7 MB
Sticky Note Studies #1 & #2 (Orange and Pink)
- 2.31 MB
Modern Girl
Sensuous Pixels
Curated by Sophia Biedka & Radek Przedpełski · 35 min.
A push and pull of the delicate human mind, explicitly transfigured into the sex appeal of the inorganic and the invisible forces of desire.
This program is 33.5 MB.
- 4.3 MB
Solarism I Boland Mills
- 3.2 MB
The Finally Frontier
- 3.8 MB
Flutter
- 932 KB
I Stood Before the Sea
- 825 KB
Become Rotten
- 3.2 MB
The Sunken Space Is Here
The Great Emptiness in the Sky
- 4.8 MB
bombaybeach
- 1.7 MB
I Missed You
- 1.7 MB
Digital Human Form Study
- 4.8 MB
Entangled Orb
- 4.3 MB
Starling of the Haunting Wolves
Missing...
Curated by Radek Przedpełski · 15 min.
In a world out of sync, someone . . . something . . . went missing . . . MISSING . . . gauges the intensity of loss that encounters and dissolves us every day. Alienated from family and friends . . . facing fakes . . . failing connection . . . getting lost in obsolete media . . . missing pixel resolution . . . fading from focus . . . reaching out to animal worlds. Haunted by the pixelated spirits of the missing, the program is a detective story set during the times of COVID-19 and mass surveillance.
This program is 25.5 MB.
- 2.1 MB
Café Surveillance
- 4.8 MB
Extras
- 4.8 MB
While We Wait
- 827 KB
Searching
- 1 MB
What about now Minsky?
- 3.9 MB
Moththth
- 4.5 MB
Catfessions #1
- 3.6 MB
Novos Modos de Sentir/New Ways of Feeling
Danse Macabre
Curated by Radek Przedpełski · 8 min.
Danse Macabre (Dark Metal Baroque) unfurls whirling Baroque choreographies of life and death, invention, extraction, rejuvenation, exploitation, deterioration and obsolescence. The morbid pieces included in the program dance in the pestilent fumes of madness, folding together algorithmic and procedural transformations, incongruous details, overflowing streaming media, shrieking skeletons, dissonant sounds, perspective distortions and fast tempos.
This program is 32.4 MB.
- 3.6 MB
Surround
- 6 MB
My Instagram
- 2.6 MB
Exhaust
- 2.6 MB
Womaness
- 2.5 MB
A Study of Robot Anatomy
- 4 MB
Life in Nowhere
- 3.8 MB
Tiny Covid-19 Ennui
- 4.46 MB
3GP studies (2009-2010)
- 2.89 MB
Noise of the Stream
Feeling the Earth's Pulse
Curated by Radek Przedpełski · 19 min.
This sci-fi program diagnoses (senses, predicts, divinates?) the fault lines, surfaces, zones and oceans occupying the wounded body of the Earth. Feeling the Earth's Pulse is a post-apocalyptic raw footage that surveys the micro-histories of our times as fossils that tell tales of violence and failure, of the inner life of things, of empty surfaces, of volatile substances, of weeping oceans, and of faces without a voice.
This program is 23.8 MB.
- 5.7 MB
Orchids
- 3 MB
And Success Will Be Your Name
339 East Hastings/Historical Truth
- 1 MB
GROUND
- 3.66 MB
When the cold storage tried to store flames
- 1 MB
Weeping Ocean
- 1.6 MB
In media res: a post-apocalyptic bot newscast
- 3.9 MB
The End
- 3.9 MB
Mask Off
Universe in your Pocket
Curated by Laura U. Marks · 22 min.
These movies compress vastness into the smallest of spaces, and find mysteries of the cosmos in the most mundane of places. Some artists hack analog and digital technologies to construct low-tech time-travel machines. Others create spaces for things that do not exist yet.
This program is 29.8 MB.
- 4.1 MB
Action for Camera 2
- 4.8 MB
Entangled Orb
- 1.6 MB
Pretty Permanent
- 850 KB
The Photogénie Series
- 4.8 MB
A Scary Clown
- 2.7 MB
Alexa, What Is Decolonize?
Message Received
- 283 KB
Star Trek: Voyager Intro in 283kb
- 5 MB
I Dream to Kiss the Melting Land
- 5.67 MB
Once Upon a Time
Mind Candy
Curated by Joey Malbon · 18 min.
The Mind Candy program showcases the mind-bending range of Small Files, from cat and dog videos, near-biblical animated GIF epics and face-melting glitch art meditations on narrative, experience and perception. Appealing for kids!
This program is 19.8 MB.
- 4.4 MB
How does she do that?
- 2 MB
Throttled
- 4.98 MB
New Beginnings
- 777 KB
Cloud Loaves
- 1.1 MB
Latent Space Walk - Outbreaks from the Grid
- 2.75 MB
O’Hara Lane
- 684 KB
Screen Box City
- 283 KB
Star Trek: Voyager Intro in 283kb
- 2.89 MB
The Noise of the Stream
Seriously Small Files
Curated by Joey Malbon · 20 min.
These Seriously Small Files transcend the realms of compression and offer glimpses of immanence through manifestos, executables and the summoning of spirits encased in magnetic tape. A testament to the format, the messages eMBedded in this program are deeply rooted in the medium itself.
This program is 24.7 MB.
- 5 MB
Sentimental Deterioration
- 3.3 MB
Trying to Play
- 670 KB
Screen Cube City
- 1.7 MB
Sticky Note Studies #1 & #2 (Orange and Pink)
- 4.9 MB
Hauntology at 576 Lines (and some at 480 lines)
- 2 MB
Boulevard du Temple 1838
- 3 MB
sparkle sublime
- 4.1 MB
Something from nothing (Dr. Evermor)
Steamy Bits
Curated by Sophia Biedka, Joey Malbon, Laura Marks, & Faune Ybarra · 23 min.
A thousand tiny sexes! Polyvalent and promiscuous, small-file media challenges the definition and function of porn. “I know porn when I see it,” as Justice Stewart said. Can you see it?
This program is 24.0 MB.
- 3.17 MB
Rear Window to Paradise
- 2 MB
Throttled
- 2 MB
Melt
- 2.9 MB
Visiting Each Other (During Lockdown)
- 404 KB
Cosmic Yellow Ball
- 1.2 MB
Family Recipes: Cheese Ball
- 1.91 MB
Fred Halsted, James Bidgood, and Ed Wood, Optics of the Sex Garage
- 1.96 MB
Writhe
- 3.6 MB
Untitled
- 4.9 MB
Dough Porn #1
PARTNERS
The Small File Media Festival grows out of the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, on unceded territory of the –Sḵwxw̱ ú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səlío lwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations. We are grateful for support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
