For the Love of Film

Catch a session of the ninth West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival this weekend.

Written by Gerald Habarth, WVU associate professor of art and founder of the WVMSFF

The West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival is an international, competitive film screening hosted by WVU’s School of Art & Design. Friday–Sunday, April 13–15, in multiple WVU venues this year, the festival showcases selected films and animations from around the world along with short films created by WVU students and regional filmmakers. 

The Film Festival is a great chance to see exceptional, compelling, and boundary-pushing works in all styles and genres, including drama, documentary, comedy, sci-fi, 3D and experimental media, and live performance. 

The nearly 125 selected films and animations are grouped thematically and presented in 1- to 2-hour screening blocks over the three days.

Student Work

The Film Festival kicks off on Friday, April 14 with three hours of videos and animations in many styles created by undergraduate students from both WVU and abroad. These will be shown outside on the WVU Mountainlair Green from 8 to 11 p.m.

Stories from Around the World

Offering stories from a variety of perspectives from around the world, international films and animations will be shown in each festival screening block, including one dedicated exclusively to international films called “Stories from Around the World” on Sunday from noon to 1 p.m. in the WVU Mountainlair Gluck Theater.

Performance Work

A new addition to the Film Festival this year, performance works are artworks in which artists use their bodies as expressive or communicative vehicles just as one might use clay, a photograph, or any other artistic medium. On Saturday multiple performances, some live and some pre-recorded, will take place throughout the day in the WVU Canady Creative Arts Center.

Theme: Indeterminate Self

Festival organizers invited filmmakers to submit works that explore the many ways—real or imagined—that we all have been impacted by the pandemic and the continual encroachment of technology, and now AI, into our lives and personal spaces. Are we being fundamentally changed by these forces? The result is a fascinating collection that investigates these and related issues, to be shown Saturday afternoon from 3 to 4 p.m. in the Canady Creative Arts Center.

Experimental Works

Since the festival’s inception in 2010, experimental video and animation has been one of its cornerstones. These works approach video and animation as artistically expressive or conceptual mediums. They tend to be highly innovative in the way they treat imagery and sound. Often visually stimulating, abstract, or cerebral, they prioritize form and novel ways of communicating above conventional storytelling. Experimental works will be shown throughout the weekend along with a dedicated hour-long screening on Saturday evening starting at 7:30 p.m. in the WVU Canady Creative Arts Center.

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