OPEN CALL
is now CLOSED.

Thank you to everyone who submitted their work for KONTEKST Film Fest!!

We are currently reviewing all received submissions and drafting a festival programme. We aim to notify all successful artists by the 2nd February 2025, and spend the following week or two providing feedbacks to everyone who submitted their work. Please stay tuned for further updates for us: follow our instagram page to be up-to-date and sign up to our newsletter.

Here is some more information about this event and our selection process:

The theme we have chosen for the festival is “ARCHIVE”.
Here are some prompts that we hope to explore through this festival:

• What is an archive? What can count as archive?

• Can archives ever be neutral or objective? Who gets to archive what and whom - and why?

• How can we, in new ways, make use of already existing archives, that often have a violent history of hierarchical categorisation and extraction?

• What are there alternatives to the kind of archiving that relies on hegemonic and forceful classification?

Whether through the use of film, still images, performance, sound, scent, taste, your body, or any sensory media, our festival space will platform work that disrupts the status quo, critiques “objective” truth, and reshapes how we experience and interpret the world.

We want to dedicate this platform primarily to work by storytellers from communities that historically have been anthropology's subjects, but our collective is here for anyone and everyone who uses media to foster a fairer, more open society.

We are determined to prioritise work submitted by those who have not yet established themselves as artists - to reflect our grassroots ethos. We want KONTEKST to serve as a piece of infrastructure that that can be used to amplify important messages from those who do not yet have established audiences. For this festival we will reject submissions sent to us by already established artists and by production companies.

We are planning to host not just film screenings but also other activities such as: talks, workshops, discussions, body movement exercises, sound and art installations.

For the main film screening event, we will prioritise short films, particularly 3-15min long (but films up to 30min long will be considered too). This is due to practical reasons - we are a relatively new festival and we want to show a wide range of films in one evening. In the future, as we grow, we will happily screen longer films as well.

We will disqualify submissions that rely on AI generated content. At the same time, we will welcome projects that engage with the subject of AI in an informed, context-aware and self-aware manners.

Our goal is to support our featured artists throughout this film festival - the visitors of our event will receive anonymous feedback forms so that everyone gets plenty of insight on how their work is received, as well as potential new ideas for development.

We have received more film submissions than we expected! That means that many of them will sadly have to be turned down this time, which doesn’t mean that the film is bad. We will most likely ask some of the filmmakers who sent us their work through the open call whether they would like to be featured in our online archive instead.

As an OPEN collective, we welcome those who submitted their work to consider whether they would like to join us - for more information on who we are, please see our manifesto and framework.