The West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival returns this spring for its 11th edition for a two-day event on April 19 & 20, 2024. We’re looking for unique, boundary-pushing works in video, animation, new- media, performance and film. Send us your newest work! Deadline for entries is March 8, 2024.
Whether you’re an emerging fine artist, student filmmaker or seasoned pro, the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival invites your creative and progressively minded submissions in video, film and animation. We screen short narrative films and experimental artworks alike, and welcome all genres: narrative, documentary, video art, experimental animation, comedy, sci/fi, 2D/3D animation, low budget/no budget and that which eludes categorization. Run by artists and art students, we celebrate the bold, the funny, the well-made, the imaginative and the enigmatic. We look for quality in form and depth in content and ideas, whether spectacularly unorthodox or time-honored in approach. Above all, we value authenticity.
Established submission categories include: Experimental, Narrative, Documentary, Animation & Student Work
Also:
Theme: AI and Art
In addition to the standard categories listed above, we invite time-based works made with or that explore Artificial Intelligence. As AI finds its way more and more into our lives, into art, and into the public discourse, we would like to use this opportunity to question and discuss and imagine its impact, uses in all of these contexts. Works submitted in this category may are not bound by genre or medium (experimental, performative, narrative, documentary… etc.) as long as they involve the use of AI in some degree and at some point in their production. Submissions can also include works that critically address issues related to AI in an investigative, critical, or expressive way. The submitter should indicate the work’s connection to these topics in the project synopsis or description.
Performance and Media Exhibition:
We also invite submissions to a one-day media and performance exhibition to take place in the Falbo Theater of the Canady Creative Arts Center that interrogate the relationship between the body and technology, intimacy and telepresence. Submissions may include theatre, dance, sound, or other performance works that incorporate audiovisual media. These might include remote, online or otherwise telematic performances. They might include augmented or virtual reality performances. They might include in-person performances involving media. Works may utilize tools like motion sensors, projection, live or fixed media in the engagement with the festival’s theme. Please submit a brief document with your submission describing concept and technical descriptions/requirements. Direct inquiries to wvmsff@gmail.com
The deadline for all entries is March 8, 2024.
Established in 2010, the WVMSFF is a creation of the Electronic Media program of the West Virginia University School of Art and Design. The primary mission of the festival is to celebrate, recognize and help to cultivate quality, innovation, and independence in the cinematic arts, and to expose West Virginia University students and the surrounding Morgantown community to the world of independent filmmaking, video and animation. The festival also strives to focus attention on topical issues in contemporary culture and to draw attention to the rich and unique heritage of West Virginia and the surrounding Appalachian region.
Modest awards have been established by the festival organizers to recognize work of exceptional accomplishment. They include a $300.00 Best of Festival award, and a $100 award in each of the festival categories.