Small File Media Festival 2026

Name: Small File Media Festival 2026
Location: The Cinematheque, Vancouver

October 17—18, 2026

The Cinematheque, Vancouver

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Programs

Too Small to Fail!

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 second—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!

OFFICIAL SELECTION

Women Destroying Things

Curated by Chelsea Birks and Laura Marks · 68 min.

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.

This program is 79.9 MB.

The Chaos of Quantity, Part One: Alien Capitalism

Curated by Mena El Shazly and Radek Przedpełski · 51 min.

"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.

This program is 81.8 MB.

The Chaos of Quantity, Part Two: Telepathic Computation

Curated by Mena El Shazly and Radek Przedpełski · 45 min.

The second of the twin entangled programs. "Telepathic Computation" reappropriates capital for arcane purposes, reaching from the largest to the smallest video.

This program is 54.3 MB.

So You Want to Be a Rock

Curated by Chelsea Birks and Laura Marks · 51 min.

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?

This program is 60.5 MB.

Suppose a Room

Curated by Joni Schinkel · 59 min.

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.

This program is 73.0 MB.

VOIDMAXXING (Joy That Kills)

Curated by Joey Malbon · 60 min.

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.

This program is 78.0 MB.

Grave Glitches

Curated by Alma F. Garcia Angeles · 47 min.

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.

This program is 56.7 MB.

PARTNERS

The 2026 edition of the Small File Media Festival continues our partnership with our future-forward friends at Wekalet Behna (Alexandria), 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.

2026 festival logos