San Francisco’s 1st LGBTQ+ COMING OF AGE short film festival
FIRST FESTIVAL EXCLUSIVELY DEDICATED TO MOVIES DEALING WITH THE COMING OF AGE OF THE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER AND QUEER COMMUNITIES.
The Event:
A 3 days short film festival with 100 movies, selected out of 2000, about the COMING OF AGE of the LGBTQ community.
We have selected the finest short-film directors from more than 50 countries (including France, USA, Myanmar, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Korea...) and have included a variety of genres such as comedies, dramas, music videos, documentaries, cartoons, etc.
All films are original and were produced between 2017 and 2018.
We made sure to offer the audience a fair mix of Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transgender love stories.
NOVEMBRE 2ND- 4TH, 2018
GRAY AREA | GRAND THEATER
The Coming of Age:
“Coming of age” is an expression
which qualifies the passage from adolescence to adulthood through our first love story. It is a complicated period for most adolescents,
but for members of the LGBTQ community, there is an added stress because they must balance figuring out their sexuality and coming out with their coming of age.
This period of transition remains in 2018 a difficult test for numerous LGBTQ teenagers, who are often victims of harassment, some even being rejected by their own families.
The Aspiration:
Our intention is to bring light to the discrimination and bullying often directed towards the LGBTQ+ community, but in an entertaining, positive and creative way.
No voyeurism, no exhibitionism, no vindication: just the recognition of love for what it is, because love doesn't need multiple labels. Everyone should be free to love and to pursue their happiness.
We do not intend to trivialize the issues faced by the fringes of society who, as a result of their culture, religious beliefs, or a lack of education, still judge violently the different ways of loving. However, if we can at least create a space where people are made aware of and can reflect on the mockeries and inequalities that some people must endure because of who they love, then our festival will have fulfilled its purpose.
The philanthropy:
When we started working on the project, we knew we wanted to do something to help the community, and from the beginning it was evident that the benefits from the festival would be donated to charity.
Initially, we thought it would be appropriate to do something to fight bullying and discrimination, but we decided to focus our attention specifically on the LGBTQ community after discovering that half the population of homeless youth in the SF bay area are part of the LGBTQ+ community. There are several reasons for this unfortunate trend: the rapidly increasing housing prices, discrimination and the exorbitant cost of hormone therapy to name a few. And these problems become more severe every year, making homelessness one of the most difficult issues in the city. Lava Mae started as the first “shower on reels”, but it quickly became much more than that, and today they make a difference by delivering radical hospitality to homeless people, helping them regain their dignity and confidence. Lava Mae quickly understood that being LGBTQ in SF is not as glamorous as we commonly think around the world. Thus, they provide essential services to these disadvantaged individuals, as well as creating a crucial safe environment. They then have the possibility of taking care of themselves in addition to having someone to talk to without facing judgment.
That being said, it is well known that San Francisco is one of the world’s most open-minded cities when it comes to sexual preference, so we couldn’t dream of a better place to host our festival!
Let’s hope that over the years, we will be able to help make things better for the community, while always offering our audience a cutting edge film festival unlike any other ones.
Enjoy!
SUBMISSIONS 2025
MI PRIMER FESTIVAL, 10TH EDITION
The call is open until November 30!
The international film festival for children and youth MI PRIMER FESTIVAL (MPF) that sows the love for cinema. It is in our hands to find ways to encourage and promote that girls, boys, adolescents and young people understand what is happening in the world and show them ways to initiate change.
MPF invites you to participate in its 10th edition, we will celebrate our first ten years, which will take place during 2025 in different regions of Peru, taking as a starting point our first event in Lima that will be from February 16 to 22, 2025 in person, thanks to different venues and cultural centers.
MI PRIMER FESTIVAL aims to create a space for the exhibition of national and international cinema and audiovisuals, framing our content around the Human Rights of NNAs established in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in the General Law on the Rights of NNAs, which recognizes them as holders of their rights.
We are a festival focused on the care and agency of children's citizenship, from a decentralized vision that aims to ensure that our content reaches a diverse audience.
MY FIRST FESTIVAL, through audiovisual and new media, promotes reflection on the various rights of children and adolescents from the imagination and education, forming creative, flexible and safe future citizens.
The Muriaé Film Festival (FCM) is a cultural event that seeks recognition and dissemination of national and regional audiovisual productions. Throughout its editions, face-to-face and online versions were built, allowing the permanence of this cultural action.
In its 7th edition, the Muriaé Film Festival reinforces its commitment to the dissemination of the Brazilian audiovisual scenario, innovating through the construction of a hybrid event (online and in person), with access to all corners of the country.
SCHEDULE:
- Registration: August 10 to September 15, 2023
- Awards: October 07, 23 (Live broadcast on the website: https://festivaldemuriae.com.br/)
- Film screening: October 5st to 15th/22
Be Epic! London International Film Festival is a yearly film festival that is looking especially for meaningful, innovative, free of cliche filmmaking.
BELIFF encourages young and old film makers from around the world to contribute to the shaping of society through inspirational films that combine with valuable messages and innovative ideas. BELIFF aims to be the rising point of film makers and up and coming new artists by promoting value and hard work and we are dedicating ourselves to stand up for everyone who is looking to refine and discover film both as entertaining and educating audiences from all around the globe.
Those who will get the best out of BELIFF film festival are:
- the visionary voices and artists (scriptwriters, directors, actors etc.) that have great empathy and a deep capacity to understanding and expressing beyond the surface layers of things and beyond those depths as well.
- distinctive scripts,
- truthful perspectives on themes and subjects,
- the creators of innovative cinematic outcomes that stand out from the usual mainstream.
Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival is a pioneering showcase of avant-garde and experimental cinema in Turkey. Our goal is to bring the best in contemporary experimental cinema from around the world to live audiences in Istanbul. Our festival aims to advance artistic expression while creating a genuine networking platform for practitioners, film enthusiasts, and industry talent. In bringing audiences highly innovative films, made by filmmakers that have strong personal views on contemporary reality, we are inspired to daringly explore the boundaries of cinematic language.
The inaugurate IIEFF took place in November 2018 where more than 150 features and shorts from 50+ countries were showcased. Over the span of 5 days events ranged from premieres, retrospectives, tributes, audio-visual performances, and discussion panels. The scope of selected works infused fresh air into the Istanbul atmosphere during the running days of the festival. We look forward to bringing more great works to life on screen.
We support visionaries that prevail beyond cinematic confines. Our priority here is to showcase films made primarily for aesthetic and philosophical reasons rather than commercial profit. We hope to give gifted international artists and filmmakers an opportunity to show their talent in all facets and forms that their craft demands. Regardless of whether you are an emerging artist or an established professional, we would like to encourage you to submit your work. It is artists like you that keep the horizon of moving images sharp and in focus so art may endure.
The 21 International Film Festival celebrates the art of film-making, helps support a community of artists and showcases Hong Kong as an entertainment and travel destination. The festival supports and nurtures emerging independent filmmakers and their stories from around the world not currently found in mainstream Hong Kong cinema.
The festival will screen narratives, documentaries, animation and music videos. No matter the subject, if the work has merit and the filming is well done – we are interested in viewing it. The festival is looking for all genres of narratives from comedy to drama and from thrillers to love stories. Your film will be viewed by our local audiences and will be judged by a jury of film professionals and a community of cinephiles.
The International Festival of the Mediterranean Cinema of Tetouan holds its 25rd edition from March 23th to 30th, 2019 in Tetouan, Morocco.
Artistic and cultural event, the festival is pursuing the following aims:
• To promote the knowledge and the distribution of the cinematographic productions of the two shores of the Mediterranean.
• To encourage and to promote the exchanges between the Mediterranean filmmakers.
The Santiago International Documentary Film Festival (FIDOCS) is the main broadcasting, diffusion, and competition event for documentary cinema in Chile and Latin America.
Focused on the promotion of dialogue and reflection, as well as in training audiences towards the appreciation of documentary film in a context of permanent transformation, FIDOCS seeks to explore the multiple paths available in documentary making as well as in the drifts proper to nonfiction works. In its program, FIDOCS incorporates the works of both experienced and emerging directors in order to address the question of “THE REAL”, and in doing so, it considers the various dimensions, disciplinary frontiers, and tensions that the question “what is real?”, as well as the documentary genre itself, has to offer us.
Throughout its history, FIDOCS has positioned itself as one of the most distinguished documentary film festivals in Latin America, standing as a privileged platform to screen contemporary cinema and to promote critical thinking. Year by year, under its selective curatorial approach, FIDOCS not only calls for important exponents of national and international audiovisual sectors to exhibit their work in Santiago, but also, in using this city as a film hub, it calls on such exponents to question, interpret, and re-write the status of contemporary documentary film practice today.
For the promotion, positioning, and exhibition of Chilean and International films, FIDOCS displays three main competitions. These sections include: INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION; CHILEAN COMPETITION, and EMERGENT SHORT COMPETITION FOR NATIONAL FILMS.
In addition, FIDOCS has the main industry activity, DOCS IN PROGRESS, for Latin-American works in progress where the jury (editors, directors, sound designers, producers, programmers), in addition to choosing a winner, feeds the filmmakers to carry out the post-production of their films and encourage their diffusion and transmission. This section is jointly run together with WIP section of CHILEDOC CONECTA.
The festival also has important training and extension activities in its FIDOCS SCHOOL, where students from film schools and communications from all over Chile so that its most outstanding students are in an intergenerational and interdisciplinary space with international and national festival guests; attending Master Classes, workshops, dialogues, among others.
In addition, in keeping with its interdisciplinary vocation, FIDOCS intends to accompany its screenings of other artistic interventions such as installations, exhibitions, performances, that from their own expressive means dialogue with the documentary concept. This is how FIDOCS EXPANDED section arises, where various artists, video-artists and filmmakers, all of them linked to the fields of sound or visuals, exhibit their work.
Finally, the chosen films will be screened after the completion of the festival, in different regions of Chile and abroad, at BEST OF FIDOCS section. The purpose is the cultural extension of the festival at a territorial level, putting emphasis on the circulation of the films at the regional level, being able to program replicas in the national territory as well as abroad.
*FIDOCS will be held with theatrical screenings.
*** Submissions for the 2024 Short Film Slam, presented by The Madlab Post will be opening in the Spring. If you are interested in submitting your live action, animation, documentary or experimental film, Sign up for our waitlist to be the first to hear about the Call for Entries for our 2024 season - https://cinema.madlabpost.com ***
The Short Film Slam is a bimonthly competition presented by The Madlab Post that focuses on providing a platform for emerging and established filmmakers to showcase their work. Each round, a selection of up to twelve short films will be screened for local audiences who get to cast a vote for their favorite film. The highest rated film at live screenings will be declared "Movie of the Month" during the following month. The highest rated "in-competition" films from each live and online screening room will advance to the final round. All finalists get to compete for a total of $1,000 in prize money during the final round and festivities preceding the 2023 shnit Cinemas screening in Philadelphia.
Since 2012, The Madlab Post has promoted community outreach and engagement through film, screening dozens of exceptional short films from around the world to local audiences; including the Academy Award nominated short film A SINGLE LIFE, Clermond-Ferrand International Film Festival Special Jury Prize winner THE BATHTUB and Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee Et ta prostate, ça va? (HOW'S YOUR PROSTATE). Main venues include the historic Bok building and Taller Puertorriqueño's state-of-the-art El Corazón Cultural Center.
The annual Merlion Film Festival Singapore (MFFS) is an inspirational event bringing together all the film organisations, storytellers and artists in Singapore, to celebrate their efforts towards a sustainable future and accelerate their impact. The festival hopes to foster more collaboration, raise awareness & ignite a public passion towards independent talent film makers and artists around the world!
The Merlion Film Festival Singapore showcases a selection of world films, giving local audiences a taste of world’s diversity and creativity. Films screened are recent and have encountered success in their country of origin.
In only three editions Il Varco International Short Film Festival has already gained the reputation of being one of the most interesting and artistically challenging festivals in Italy for films from all around the world, screening together an authorial selection that is a mixture of independent films, low budget productions, first films and great masterpieces.
In only three years our festival and its parallel screening "Short Days" have received more than 4900 films from 106+ countries, made 14 screenings around Italy with more than 1300 paying spectators screening the best short films from all around the world and giving directors the possibility to interact with a public of film students, film critics, directors, cinephiles and moviegoers.
Screenings take place in the biggest cinema of Abruzzi, on a 30 meters screen with DCP 2K projectors at maximum quality with 7.1 audio. Our staff prepares the DCP masters with double ita/eng subs for free for all the selected films, and you can keep it later.
It's a free and open to all short film festival based in Paris (France). Concept is simple : submit 2min20 shortfilms about an imposed theme each year. For this 15th edition, it'll be "A human superpower". To participate, you must register on our website www.festivalnikon.fr/en until January 10, 2025
IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT FILMS OVER 2MIN20 WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED INTO THE COMPETITION AND WILL BE IMMEDIATELY EXCLUDED WITHOUT VIEWING.
DATE AND LOCATION
The 28th edition of the European Short Film Festival of Bordeaux will take place from March 27th to 28th 2024. The projection nights will take place at the UGC Ciné-Cité cinema in Bordeaux.
GOALS
The European Short Film Festival of Bordeaux aims to promote the short film format to the Région Aquitaine's audience. It facilitates the access to cinema for a large public, from all ages. It also supports the discovery of talented directors coming from all over Europe.,It’s a way for the filmmakers to be appreciated by a jury, no matter if they are mere enthusiasts or professionals.
MAFIC: “MÁLAGA- INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL”: Training, BUSINESS AND APPRECIATION Space for new audiovisual, Artistic and Cinematographic products; Academic laboratories; suitable land for the meeting and exchange of alliances and development of projects between the regional, national and international industry.
MAFIC: is composed of 3 EXPERIENCES designed as follows:
REMA: "EXHIBITION ROUTE - MALAGUEÑA": Exclusive Exhibition Spaces throughout the municipality, of the latest Audiovisual Productions - Cinematographic, International, National, and Regional.
MAM “MÁLAGA AUDIOVISUAL AND ART, MARKETING” offers you opportunities that allow you to expand your network of contacts and learn about the regional, national or international Audiovisual market in artistic areas (cinema, theater, music, designers, plastic artists, costumes, decoration, comics, etc.)
LAFAMA "MALAGUEÑA AUDIOVISUAL TRAINING LABORATORIES"
They are laboratories of investigation and knowledge, where illustrious and recognized personages, will expose to the public in general or specific, detailed information of subjects of the cinematographic industry.
TIAF- Tbilisi International Animation Film Festival is an international event, promoting Animation Art and Industry Development Culture through Caucasus region and Internationally. TIAF is part of Caucasus Con, an educational and entertaining International event, dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, animation, video game and related popular Art Forms, primarily through the presentation of events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of animation art and culture.
The festival includes parallel activities: professional and family workshops, animation and game jams, film and music, school programs, the presence of leading figures from the world of Animation, conferences and other interesting events associated with audiovisual culture for children and young people.
Psicodália is an independent multicultural festival that opens space for diverse artistic and cultural settings such as music, performing arts, workshops and cinema.
In its sixth edition receiving films, Cinedália (psychedelic cinema) has a daily schedule of 20 hours during the 5 days of the festival, counting around 120 titles each edition.
