Now in its ELEVENTH year, the HOLLYWOOD QUEER SHORT FILM FESTIVAL (formerly CMG Short Film Festival) offers four programs of LGBTQ short films representing the very best of our vast and diverse community’s filmic offerings. Besides attending the larger festivals and personal referrals, we winnow through hundreds of films submitted through the FilmFreeway submission platform, to come up with the less than 40 films that comprise our programs.

We proceed this year in the conviction that our festival is now part of the resistance to the current national policies that are attempting to erase queer presence from the national consciousness. VISIBILITY is an act of revolution and an affirmation that we are not going back into hiding.

To promote community, we give an edge in the selection process to local (Los Angeles Area) filmmakers and talent. Being local doesn’t guarantee acceptance, of course, but we very much like the idea of creating a “family” of local artists who know and support each other. For some, ours will be the only LGBTQ film festival their film will appear in locally, and we recognize and welcome the unique responsibility this imposes on us. To keep faith with this community, we have a generous comps policy for filmmakers, cast and crew.

We are proud to offer “grass roots” submission pricing, to encourage submissions from less well-financed filmmakers. Thanks to FilmFreeway, we can afford to do this.

Awards & Prizes

We have an audience favorite award, determined by balloting, and jury awards for best comedy or musical, best drama, and best (regardless of gender) in each of those two categories. The jury is also empowered to create additional awards for anything they deem worthy of that kind of recognition. None of the awards has a cash value.

Rules & Terms

We expect submitting filmmakers to have all rights to their material necessary to authorize us to do all of the following:
We have right to screen at the festival, use short excerpt for a festival trailer, use publicity stills for our press releases and other collateral materials including our web page, printed program, and post card. We reserve the right to use the film at a "best of" program taking place in the year subsequent to the Festival date. We keep a copy of the film for Festival Archive.

PLEASE be sure to include a short description of your film in your submission materials. We will contact you if you are selected to get stills from the film for use on our web page and in our printed program.

We also want to use TRAILERS for selected films in our integrated marketing campaigns, especially on social media.

4 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
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Networking
  • Rebecca Chivers

    Had a fantastic experience with the HQSFF. I felt that the festival cared about each and every individual's project on a personal level rather than just seeing me as part of a whole. I loved the festivals focus on connecting with the individual filmmakers through social media promotions, interviews and the live QnAs. The festival created an intimate and welcoming space, fostering connections between the attendees that was really appreciated especially as a Hollywood resident! Thanks for letting The Fangs I'm After be part of your show!

    October 2025
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  • Henry Baker

    Everyone involved with our movie is grateful to be included in this festival. All of our Los Angeles friends were able to attend and view our film. Great publicity for our film and the films of so many wonderful queer filmmakers.

    October 2024
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  • MMS Short Film Distribution Agency

    Lovely festival, well managed.
    We cannot attend it in-live but communication was great!

    October 2024
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  • Marri Savinar

    Our experience at the CMG Short Film Festival 2018 was one we will never forget. Jim is truly one of the best people we've had the pleasure of meeting during our festival experience. The CMG Short Film Festival is extremely organized, very professional, and an incredible opportunity to meet other filmmakers. We were honored to be amongst the other films that were selected this year as they were of the highest quality. We can't recommend this festival enough - it is truly an experience we will never forget and it was our pleasure to be a part of it.

    October 2018
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