Small File Media Festival returns to The Cinematheque in 2025! Stay tuned and follow us on Instagram for announcements and details about our sixth festival, taking place this Fall.

Since 2020, we’ve been raising awareness about the environmental impact of streaming media. Streaming comprises a significant chunk of the world’s digital carbon footprint, but consumers continue to stream all kinds of media in high definition—video on demand, video chat, video conferencing, high-resolution online games, TikToks, Instagram Reels, and energy-sucking AI “utopias.”

Our festival challenges media makers to intervene in the 4K dystopia of bandwidth imperialism by creating original small-file movies of any length, proving once again that small files are *the* sustainable cinematic avant-garde. Watching small-file media together on a big screen brings the democratic potential of cinema into the digital age by showcasing artworks made with eco-friendly practices, affordable equipment, and minimal processing time. How small is a small-file movie? No more than 1.44 megabytes per minute, the storage size of a floppy disk. Small-file creators use ingenious techniques to make these tiny movies beautiful and effective.