Big Screen Wonder

The 10th annual West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival takes us to new visual and narrative landscapes this weekend.

A short film festival is an immersion in a stunning breadth of visual and storytelling wonder. So we’re lucky that the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival is based right here in Morgantown—and the 10th annual festival is this weekend, April 18–21, in multiple venues. 

“This festival celebrates exceptional, compelling, and boundary-pushing works in film, experimental video, and animation,” says Gerald Habarth, the WVU associate professor who founded and organizes the festival. 

To create this juried international event each year, a panel of filmmakers, video artists, and other professionals reviews submissions from around the world and chooses a subset of the entries. The result in 2024 is an extravaganza of 130 of the most exciting new works from dozens of countries. This year’s festival also offers a deep dive into the many ways that artificial intelligence is transforming visual storytelling.

All screenings and workshops are free and open to the public. Plan your viewing—here’s a summary of the schedule: 

Thursday, April 18, 6 p.m.
Morgantown Art Party, 218 Walnut Street

A selection of multimedia works by current WVU students specializing in video and animation.

Friday, April 19
Canady Creative Arts Center, 1436 Evansdale Drive

8 p.m.–midnight

The festival’s competitive film and video screenings begin with 16 works from regional and international artists in multiple genres. Among the highlights, Habarth says, is In C, Too, an animation created using generative images and AI algorithms combined with video of dancers shot on green screen. The natural, human motion drives the mesmerizing animation. Habarth also notes the funny short film I Wet My Plants. 

Later in the evening is the annual student show, which presents works in film, video, and animation by students at WVU and from across the region and abroad.

Saturday, April 20
Canady Creative Arts Center, 1436 Evansdale Drive

10 a.m.–11:30 p.m.

The all-day lineup opens with a showcase of 15 AI-related works from filmmakers around the globe. Habarth highlights Testimony, in which the filmmaker imagines what an AI entity might visually and sonically produce as it faces the recognition that it is without a physical body. Habarth will moderate a panel discussion exploring themes of creativity, imagination, authorship, and evolving definitions of art and what it means to be an artist in the age of artificial intelligence. 

At 6 p.m., screenings continue with animations, narrative shorts, and experimental works, including the moving Blue Hour. The film depicts the personal and emotional journeys that two women undergo when a struggling young photographer is hired for a cheap, last-minute portrait gig that leaves an indelible mark on both women. 

The final session of the day is the cornerstone of the festival—a selection of experimental films and animations. This screening includes Placenta, by a filmmaker whose stunning views of an enigmatic seaborne traveler towing an equally mysterious cargo prompt us to contemplate the weight of our experience. 

Live audio/visual performances will take place throughout the day. Speculative Speciation, for example, an animation and performance work inspired by the loss forever of the more than 160 species of birds that have gone extinct, visually imagines the evolutions these birds might have undergone in the future.

Sunday, April 21
WVU Mountainlair Gluck Theater,  1550 University Avenue

11 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

An all-day line-up of four sessions closes with a visually stunning collection of experimental works of visual and conceptual abstraction. The captivating animation Electronic Insects, which uses geometric patterns, dynamic movements, and interlaced colors to represent insect features and forms, opens that last screening.

The WVMSFF is hosted by the The Digital Art and Animation program of the WVU School of Art & Design.

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