Chair: Susan Gerofsky
Submission period: 1 April–7 May 2024
The Bridges Short Film Festival presents an annual reel of invited and juried short films exploring themes that integrate mathematics and the arts. The program often includes films, videos and animations with educational, corporate, and artistic contexts, as well as those made specifically for the Bridges festival. See the gallery page for the contents of past short film festivals.
Review criteria and scoring
This short film festival is organized and curated by the Short Film Festival Jury. All submitted films will undergo a refereeing process. The festival can only accommodate a limited number of films, which may necessitate rejecting some high quality works. Review criteria include:
- Content that brings together mathematics and the arts in interesting, creative and sometimes surprising ways
- Esthetic appeal
- Storytelling
- Medium and style
- Craftsmanship
During evaluation, a strong emphasis will be put on mathematical/artistic connections and storytelling. A math-related story will score higher than geometrical patterns without explanation. A variety of styles can be submitted, including visualizatons of objects, spaces and patterns; conceptual/artistic animations; mathematical stories and tales; artwork in all genres based on mathematical rules and patterning; exciting educational explanations and experiments; entertainment integrating mathematics and the arts; and more. Note that we take a broad definition of the arts in the spirit of the whole Bridges conference.
Submission process
The submission period is 1 April to 7 May. To submit to the short film festival, please visit submit.bridgesmathart.org and log in with an existing account or create a new account. Please note that this is a new submission website for several Bridges categories as of 2023. For more details on creating an account and submitting, please see the submission instructions for the art exhibition.
You may submit 1–3 films. Your submission needs to include a link to the film, a still image, and accompanying descriptions. Short film submissions should not exceed 5 minutes in length and should also include some form of audio, as they will be screened in an auditorium to a large group of people (i.e., it is a film festival type setting, not a gallery type setting).
Representative images (a still frame from your film) should be JPEG files with a dimension of 600 pixels in the larger direction, RGB format, saved with maximum quality.
For reviewing purposes, you will need to provide a URL to a location online where the jurors can view your film. This can be a YouTube or Vimeo link, or a link to your personal website. The jurors will not download film files for reviewing; the film must be available to stream online. If you have privacy concerns, you can upload your film to YouTube or Vimeo and make it password protected. If your film is password protected, please provide the password in the appropriate field in the film submission form.
In contrast to the rules for regular or short papers, authors of films accepted to the Bridges Short Film Festival do not need to attend the conference in person, though we highly recommend it. At least one author of each accepted video must register for the conference, either by paying full registration and attending or by paying the non-attending artist rate.
If your film is selected, you will be responsible for delivering a production quality copy of your film for projection at the conference. Please provide a .mov file using H.264 compression. It may be possible to process different formats, however, we cannot guarantee to screen your film if a different format is submitted. The finished size should be at least 1280×720 pixels, and preferably 1920×1080 pixels.
Schedule
- Submission period: 1 April–7 May 2024
- Author notification: 30 May 2024
- Submission of production quality copy: 18 June 2024
Contact
If you have any questions regarding the short film festival, please contact the chair at filmfestival@bridgesmathart.org.