The Small File Media Festival return for a second year, presenting over 100 lovingly curated small file works. Why? Because streaming media is killing the planet and is responsible for over 1% of global carbon emissions. The festival runs August 10-21, 2021, and will be held online, in person and at site specific events across the globe with our partners the Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts, the Los Angeles’ Video Poetry Festival, and the Cairo Video Festival.

Information and communications technologies generate almost 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions and a third of that is streaming video—clogging data centers and networks and tiring out our devices. 2021 is trending to become a #hotclimatesummer and we intend to keep it cool with small files. In this year’s fest, 90 movies from 13 countries, lovingly curated by the Small File team, extract phenomenal creativity from compression algorithms, celebrating animation, performance, storytelling, rituals in transfigured time, data visualization holidays, hot bugs, lichen songs and much more!

This year we up the ante by expanding our 5-megabyte file limit to include a 22-megabyte bingeworthy category and a range of works including looped, data moshed, executable and cinematic works. These tiny files have big hearts and will be streaming to you from in tiny files of no more than a megabyte a minute while giving maximum eye and mind candy with minimal environmental damage.

Last year’s programming committee returns including festival director and founder Dr. Laura U Marks, artist Faune Ybarra, media scholar Radek Przedpełski, filmmaker Sophia Biedka, lens-based media artist Joey Malbon and poet and youth ambassador Sanjana Karthik. We’ve got panels too! Small-File Aesthetics, Small-File Cosmologies, Engineering Heroes, Makers Forum, and Youth Panel, plus the closing awards ceremony featuring the world’s tiniest trophy, the Small File Mini Bear!