Blog: Film festivals

“I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.” - Hannah Höc

The International Experimental Film Festival organised by the Institute for Experimental Arts

The International Experimental Film Festival is an international encounter dedicated to experimental film art, announces the call for submissions. The festival will take place in Greece. The festival will experience screenings, installations, performances, conferences, film concerts, workshops. The festival seeks to expand the possibilities of film beyond traditional formats and spaces, creating a zone of creative contagions between cinema and the visual arts, historical works and the current production, analogic and digital, filmmaking and critical thinking.

Experimental cinema is a free, radical and purposeful cinema that responds to the aesthetic, political or philosophical need to see and explore cinematic horizons, away from large industries and hegemonic formulas of creation. It is through experimental cinema that we find authentic ways to create audiovisual art.

A cinema that breaks the narrative, and most of all visual, bounds to which we're used. A cinema that elaborates on film medium to its fullest, by including even the most extreme possibilities. John Cage said it well: an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not forseen; the cinema we're looking for is a cinema of the unpredictable.

The International Experimental Film Festival is the pioneering space, in the exhibition of experimental content in cinema, which seeks to show excellence and innovation in the independent production of the film world. Celebrate aesthetic diversity, new narratives, and new media and formats; a program that reveals the complexity of social, cultural and artistic phenomena. We understand experimental cinema like a divergent cinema, that vanishes the boundaries with art, emphasizing the experimental modes of creation.

The Institute for Experimental Arts was founded in 2008 in Athens- Greece as a non-profit platform of creative expression and research in the fields of theater, performance art, digital media, installation, poetry and art theory. The Institute is committed to existing as an open meeting point for poets-writers, directors, actors, theater engineers/ technicians, performance artists, photographers, video artists and the writers who develop new analytical tools on contemporary art, media & communication.

We accept all works that fits into the experimental film category and all its sub genres like found footage, essay film, expanded cinema, experimental animation, abstract film, experimental documentary, video art, virtual reality, direct animation or any other alike.
There is no genre, topic or length restrictions. The International Experimental Film Festival features Avant-Garde and Experimental films of any length.

The festival will always see the development of the cinematic language with critical thinking, regardless of the terms ‘cinema industry’ or independent cinema. For this reason, the International Experimental Film Festival will always bring a critical discourse to observe it through curatorial programs, symposium, and public lecture to broaden the knowledge of the ever-changing cutting-edge cinema aesthetics.

Our mission is also to create relations within contemporary art and cinematic spheres and to highlight cultural areas of immediate interest. Our goal is to generate interest in experimental cinema.

If your film has *any* dialogue, subtitles in English or Greek is a requirement.

Submissions without subtitles will be considered incomplete.

Terms and Condition:

+ All films with dialogue must have ENGLISH or GREEK subtitles
+ A submission does not guarantee a screening
+ OK if your film has screened before

We believe in culture as a pluralistic and intangible value, the awards assigned by the jury are purely symbolic. The selected films are going to be judged by an exceptional jury, and seen by a vast audience of film lovers.

Golden Arrow Best Film
Golden Arrow Short Film
Golden Arrow Best Director
Golden Arrow Best Original Screenplay
Golden Arrow Best Music
Golden Arrow Best Performance
Golden Arrow Best Picture

The International Experimental Film Festival reserves the right to use small portions and stills of accepted films for promotion of events.

Deadline: All submissions must be submitted, emailed, or postmarked no later than August 15, 2024

The IEFF will announce the 2024 program selection on October 2024.
The IEFF will take place in October 24,25,26 & 27 2024.
The International Experimental Film Festival is a project of the Institute for Experimental Arts

If you have any questions : athensfestivalfilm@gmail.com

Process Submission Fee

Deadline for all submissions is August 15, 2024
Submission fee is 25 euro per video, or media project.
NATIONAL BANK OF GREECE
IBAN GR3701101320000013200441999

EMAIL SUBMISSIONS
All email submissions must be accompanied by a completed PDF submission form, the receipt of the online payment to the Bank Account (details above).
Please name all the attach files in the email with your name and your country.
You are welcome to attach additional documents to your email submission pertaining to mission or artistic statement, exhibition history, publicity materials, press kits, bios, and curriculum vitae.
If you want to submit your participation to the IEFF by email, you have to send only ONE email with ONE wetrasfer file. All the files in the wetrasfer must be titled your name and your country.
Email your submission to the following address:
athensfestivalfilm@gmail.com

POSTAL SUBMISSIONS
If you want to post your material. You have to post a USB including all the material that we want. Your media files, the application form, still images, the receipt of the online payment to the Bank Account (details above) and all other material that you would like to share with the festival. All the files in the USB must have as a title your name and your country.
Postal Address :
THE INSTITUTE FOR EXPERIMENTAL ARTS
KREONTOS 159
SEPOLIA
ATHENS 10443
GREECE

ALTERNATIVE SUBMISSION METHODS

The International Experimental Film Festival proudly accepts entries on Festhome, a way to enter film festivals and creative contests.

“In its purest form, done right, watching an experimental film is the closest you can come to dreaming another person’s dreams. Which is why to watch one is, essentially, to invite another person into your head, hoping you emerge haunted.”
― Gemma Files, Experimental Film

Because of how much movies cost, it's dangerous to be experimental on one film after the other. But we can experiment with television. We can do things that are fringe and bring ideas to the table that are offbeat and original.
— Steven Spielberg

You dont do an experimental film to become rich, so the people who are involved are involved because they enjoy the creative aspect of it.
— Isabella Rossellini

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos. — David Cronenberg