call: West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival 2026
Deadline: 6 February 2026
Call for entries
2026 West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival
Dates: March 4 – 8, 2026
Location: Morgantown, West Virginia, USA
The West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival invites submissions in video/film, animation, VR, video installation & performance to its 13th edition, which takes place March 4 – 8, 2026 on the campus of West Virginia University. We’re looking for innovative, provocative, highly charged and deeply personal works in a variety of genres and themes. This year we also welcome submissions to a special thematic category, exploring new insights into evolving definitions and understandings of Time, in all of its many contexts. Deadline for entries is February 6, 2026.
SUBMISSION CATEGORIES: We welcome works in a broad range of styles and categories:
•?????Experimental
•?????Short Narrative
•?????Documentary
•?????Animation
•?????Student Work
•?????Works focused on the theme of Time
•?????Two-channel video installation
•?????VR
•?????Outdoor Video Projection
Time Theme:
In addition to our regular categories, we invite short film, video, media installation, and performance works that deal with meanings and experiences of time. This year the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival coincides with the weekend when we turn clocks forward in observance of Daylight Saving Time. We would like to take this opportunity to issue a call for film and video works that ruminate on light and darkness, the malleability of time, the geological, social, and philosophical meanings of time, as well as the fleeting or expansive experience of time. How does the experience of time change in a world marked by instantaneous communication across long distances? How can time slow when we step outside the constraints of the industrial workday? How can the technological manipulation of light in film augment our experience of time? As AI and machine learning move us ever closer to realtime simulations reality, how does our sense of time speed up or collapse in on itself? What changes when realtime video technologies intersect with the meticulous sculpting of the editing timeline of film? How do our technologies warp or reify natural and artificial notions of time? How can the mind distort or dissolve the experience of time?
Agreements:
• Maximum running time of 15 minutes.
• Works must have been completed after January 1, 2024.
• Separate entry form and fee required for each entry.
• Artists agree to allow festival organizers use of accepted works for festival promotional materials and events.
Inquiries:
wvmsff@gmail.com
entry fee
Regular Entry: $15
College Students: $5
West Virginia Students: Free
High School Students (anywhere): Free
Contact addresses/URL
Email: wvmsff@gmail.com
URL: https://www.wvmsff.com
