Toronto's shortest festival calls for submissions

Toronto's One Minute Film & Video Festival, which was founded almost completely accidentally in 2003, is now moving into its fourth season and has released its Call for Submissions for this year, looking for the best that Toronto - and the world - has to offer in one-minute movie masterpieces.

As usual, the festival puts a premium on getting filmmakers off their ass to make new work, by not only telling you how long your movie has to be, but also what it should be about! This year's theme is growth. Anyone and everyone is invited/encouraged to make a movie in whatever medium they please (a prize winner in 2004 was made by a first-time filmmaker on his cell phone), and interpreting the theme as broadly (or as narrowly) as they like.

What does "growth" say to you?

Trees, children, urban sprawl, mild swellings, relative scale, personal achievement, getting old, getting fat, getting smarter, production overdrive, TPS reports, evolution, abnormal tissue masses, populations, puberty, gigantic people looming over other smaller people, and the complete history of humanity itself might all be thematically explored under the umbrella of "growth."

And just to make things extra-appealing, all entries postmarked before June 30th are gloriously free! (If it takes you until the end of the summer to film your minute, you can still send submissions until September 1 for the late deadline.)

What are you waiting for?

The One Minute Film & Video Festival screens annually at the Bloor Cinema in November. Complete submission information for this year's programme is available at the festival web site.