Small File Media Festival 2026
Get a festival pass →Pay what you can. Your access code arrives by email, then watch the whole festival at smallfile.tv.
ONLINE FESTIVAL
All 85 films from this year’s festival stream on-demand October 31—November 7, 2026 at smallfile.tv. Stream from anywhere in the world and explore a trove of extras including an online panel, global watch parties, bonus films, SFTV Public Access, and award winners. Click the link above to purchase a pass, or email us at [email protected] for low-barrier options.
We stream on our own bespoke player, built small to load fast and show the films at their native resolution, exactly as the artists intended. No Vimeo, no YouTube, nothing owed to bandwidth imperialists.
OFFICIAL TRAILER
Check out the 2026 festival trailer at SFTV!
Online video has a ginormous carbon footprint because of data centres, networks, and our shiny devices. Luckily the Small File Media Festival is back for our seventh year with a call out—an all-out intervention to save the world, one pixel at a time. And the call was answered! We received over 400 small-scale experiments from all over the world, including narratives, documentaries, confessionals, animations, glitchfests, and sci-fis. Filmmakers, artists, activists, media pirates, and rogue technologists are taking part in a revolutionary mode of creating and consuming moving-image media.
At a mere 1.44 megabytes per minute—a tiny fraction of the bitrate of standard video—small files travel lightly and under the radar. When governments snoop and infrastructures collapse, small files will be ready—you can send these cuties in an email or a text or even by pigeon. Yet small files bust out big on the user’s end! We are stunned by the big-screen cinephilia of this year’s submissions. Using ingenious techniques from “obsolete” cameras to precise camerawork, handmade animation, and pixel-bedazzled compression, small-file makers show that cinema doesn’t have to be big to be beautiful.
We invite you to celebrate six punk-chic programs of vibe-shifting, aura-casting Small File ecomedia. As ever, in our alluring, lovingly curated programs—“Women Destroying Things”; “The Chaos of Quantity in Two Parts: Alien Capitalism and Telepathic Computation”; “So You Want to Be a Rock”; “Suppose a Room”; “Voidmaxxing”; and “Grave Glitches”—we are stretching the boundaries of cinema across hitherto unvisited cosmologies. Small files are media art’s sustainable avant-garde!
Too Small to Fail!
OFFICIAL SELECTION
SERIES 1 · Saturday, October 17 at 7:00 PM
Women Destroying Things
Curated by Chelsea Birks and Laura Marks · 68 min. · 79.9 MB
A series of increasingly dramatic insubordinations. From umbrella repair to a casual shooting, a world-destroying appetite, and polite terrorism, each rebellious act imagines a new world that might (or might not) be a kinder one.
- 4.1 MB
Stenography
- 1 MB
Before the Beginning
- 4.73 MB
Between Stops
- 5.3 MB
Good Girl Dispatches
- 5.2 MB
Where this flower blooms
- 5.1 MB
Tam Lin
- 1.8 MB
girl, grass, sky
- 23.8 MB
Anarchafeminist Divinations
- 2.8 MB
Penny Dregg
- 11.2 MB
Driver's License
- 6.2 MB
Beware the Hunger
- 8.7 MB
We
SERIES 1 · Saturday, October 17 at 7:00 PM
The Chaos of Quantity, Part One: Alien Capitalism
Curated by Mena El Shazly and Radek Przedpełski · 51 min. · 81.8 MB
"Quantity itself is simultaneously rational and irrational," remarked the Khartoum-based Crystalist conceptualists. The twin entangled programs perform this contradiction oscillating between the allure of consumerism and the potential of the image. Both programs investigate the relentless accumulation of capital using different strategies. "Alien Capitalism" stages resistance against the chokehold of commodities. "Telepathic Computation" reappropriates capital for arcane purposes. The 1976 Crystalist manifesto states, "in response to this quantum chaos, Crystalist thought emerges and proposes the teleological quantity, which is pleasure." From the largest to the smallest video, this program is loud in the most silent way.
- 17 MB
The Image Has No Right To Exist
- 11.9 MB
Consider
- 2.02 MB
ReWritingThePast
- 6 MB
Missing Remittances
- 2.15 MB
5\e3p
- 6.5 MB
The Third Eye
- 14.7 MB
Hansel and Gretel Get Kicked Out (Silent Version)
- 2.3 MB
The Longest of Trips
- 1.79 MB
The Last Low-Bandwidth Message
- 14.5 MB
Slootwater
- 2.5 MB
Golovy
- 0.47 MB
Kumiai-Ki: The Mighty Union Machine
SERIES 1 · Saturday, October 17 at 7:00 PM
The Chaos of Quantity, Part Two: Telepathic Computation
Curated by Mena El Shazly and Radek Przedpełski · 45 min. · 54.3 MB
The second of the twin entangled programs. "Telepathic Computation" reappropriates capital for arcane purposes, reaching from the largest to the smallest video.
- 3.2 MB
Dreaming in the Old Summer Palace
- 4.9 MB
My Memories Do Not Fail Me
- 5.4 MB
LINEA DE TIEMPO 5
- 2.56 MB
The Astronomer
- 1.3 MB
Footsteps
- 3 MB
Pixel Flesh Fantasies
- 8.49 MB
Prisoner of The Sea
- 3.4 MB
UPROOTING
- 5 MB
Micro Illumination
- 3.56 MB
Echoes of Red
- 13.5 MB
AFTERBURN
SERIES 2 · Sunday, October 18 at 1:00 PM
So You Want to Be a Rock
Curated by Chelsea Birks and Laura Marks · 51 min. · 60.5 MB
Shimmering pixels evoke the inner experiences of everything from caterpillars to plastic bottles to computer code. Each film asks a question that demands a radical shift in perspective. Do birds have petty thoughts? How do dogs pick favourites? What happens when rocks are tired of meditating?
- 0.7 MB
A Cloud Path's Root
- 1.84 MB
Welcome to the Moss Connection
- 11.4 MB
By Land & Sea
- 15.1 MB
online disconnected
- 3.1 MB
slough_v2
- 6.6 MB
Oblivious
- 4.2 MB
worms in public (wip)
- 11.1 MB
Rocks
- 5.52 MB
The Joy of Personification
- 0.95 MB
Bottle or Rock
SERIES 2 · Sunday, October 18 at 1:00 PM
Suppose a Room
Curated by Joni Schinkel · 59 min. · 73.0 MB
This room can hold almost anything: a shadow, a spider, a signal, a suspect, a bed. These films pass through, touching the walls and leaving the door open. Hide out or hang out until morning.
- 3 MB
Phthalo's Cave
- 2.9 MB
Digital Threads
- 6.9 MB
From Within
- 13.4 MB
Andromeda Interlaced
- 4.2 MB
lucid dream spider
- 1.9 MB
SUBSTRATE 07
- 1.1 MB
_absurd-freedom_
- 8.4 MB
FLAW
- 6.8 MB
MY HOUSE MY ONLY KINGDOM
- 4.3 MB
Turquoise Tile Echos
- 12.9 MB
Icarus
- 5.2 MB
Assembly
- 2 MB
Wshmch
SERIES 3 · Sunday, October 18 at 4:00 PM
VOIDMAXXING (Joy That Kills)
Curated by Joey Malbon · 60 min. · 78.0 MB
Hole like a hole, hole as your hole, I'd rather hole then give you a hole. Holes beget bodies beget holes in a hole tableau. Allow yourself to become uncomfortably close to the void as these eleven small films transverse bodies, liquid humours, and VHS spaces. From whispered secrets to analog backroom dreams, tiny delights await.
- 6 MB
Blue Supine Nova
- 5.4 MB
No Void
- 5.6 MB
71
- 2.85 MB
Birthmark
- 2.5 MB
Does this look swollen
- 2.7 MB
Hot Canada Day in Murder Alley
- 6.6 MB
Roco and Roco
- 2.6 MB
Tonnta
- 14.9 MB
Timestep
- 7.4 MB
Welcome to Canada Ludmila, Katia, Bobby September 1994 Vancouver, BC.
- 7.1 MB
Shavesong
- 3.3 MB
Joy That Kills
- 2.1 MB
Untitled [Small Dreams]
- 8.9 MB
Wave After Wave
SERIES 3 · Sunday, October 18 at 4:00 PM
Grave Glitches
Curated by Alma F. Garcia Angeles · 47 min. · 56.7 MB
Be reborn through degrading pixels. Passing from the familiar to the unknown, this program will take you through the unclear limits of life, death, and rebirth.
- 5.4 MB
The Wake
- 9.7 MB
La Napoles
- 4.32 MB
Sueño de Niño (Córdoba)
- 3.8 MB
I Thought There'd Be Flying Cars By Now
- 0.21 MB
Fun Bear
- 0.29 MB
Death with Piano from Hell
- 0.64 MB
Death with Cowboy Hats from Heaven
- 1.62 MB
The Beast
- 10.3 MB
the whistleblower
- 4.44 MB
ECHOES
- 1.17 MB
Millipede Man
- 9.6 MB
COWMAN
- 5.2 MB
Sausage Film - Never Stop Eating, Drinking, Smoking, and Partying
AFFILIATED EVENTS
- 2026 Small File Maker's Forum - Day 2
November 4, 2026
Online - 2026 Online Edition Watch Party: Vancouver
November 3, 2026
Lobe Studio · 713 E Hastings, Vancouver - 2026 Small File Maker's Forum - Day 1
November 3, 2026
Online - Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen Program
October 1, 2026
Intersection of Broadway and Kingsway · 350 East 2nd Ave, Vancouver
PARTNERS
The 2026 edition of the Small File Media Festival continues our partnership with our future-forward friends at The Hmm (Amsterdam), CONNECT (Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications at Trinity College Dublin), and The Cinematheque (Vancouver). We’re grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver Arts and Culture, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
