The Cinematheque

Too Small to Fail!

The Small File Media Festival returns to The Cinematheque for its sixth year! Founded in 2020, SFMF raises awareness of the carbon impact of streaming media. The data centres, networks, and devices that store, compress and decompress, transmit, and play video contribute to a whopping 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions—and this number is only rising.

This year, our programming grows out of founder Laura Marks’s Guggenheim Fellowship, ​“Small Files for a Small World.” Small-file media thrives in places where electricity and internet access are limited. Marks, and members of the SFMF team, trained artists from Mexico City, Tehran, Dhaka, Vancouver, and Cairo in the arts of the small file. The films from these international workshops reflect on place through surprising aesthetics and moving storylines. Frame by frame, they take risks in both politics and art, showing that cinema doesn’t have to be big to be beautiful.

Come experience the Five Beauties of Small Files:
1. Environmentalism! Natch.
2. Creativity! At just 1.44 megabytes per minute, small-file films require creativity at every stage of pre-production, camera and app selection, performance, filming, and compression.
3. Minimal tech! You can make a small-file movie with old devices, encouraging upcycling and saving money.
4. Resilience! Small-file media functions on precarious infrastructures.
5. Discretion! Thanks to video compression, small-file movies protect sensitive information and invite interpretation.

Join us on Friday, October 17 at 7:00 pm for the opening night where we will screen a shorts program of international small files followed by a selection of greatest hits and sleepers from the last five years of the festival. A cocktail reception will follow, along with a special announcement! Our festival continues on Saturday, October 18, celebrating over sixty cinematic jewels and the premiere of a feature film by SFMF 2024 Audience Award winners Liam and Will Riley. As always, the festival will stream online at small​file​.ca the week after the live events.

The 2025 Small File Media Festival continues our partnership with our future-forward friends at VIVO Media Arts, the Cairo Video Festival, The Hmm (Amsterdam), and CONNECT (Ireland). We’re grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.