The Northampton Film Festival, based in Northampton MA, is a small, volunteer run, and community focused festival. Although we are a small festival, the unique interests of each of our team members allow us to offer a wide variety of thoughtful programming. Last year’s tracks included feature-length narrative and documentary works, animation, experimental films by artists connected to Western Massachusetts, children’s programming, virtual reality and augmented reality experiences, cult classic events, and filmmaking workshops. Some examples of our unique programming have included a screening curated by local filmmaker Sarah Bliss entitled Stretching the Frame: Death, Dying, and the Material Body, which showcased work by members of the Waltham-based analog film collective AgX; an installation of films from Iran which were each under 60 seconds; and a midnight showing of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 cult classic House.

This year we are thrilled to be including a submission based experimental non-fiction program. We are seeking films that provoke dialogue about such issues as the ethics of ethnographic practice, intersections between fiction and realism, and formal experimentation, on equal measure to their subject matter. We seek to bring the most thoughtful, stirring, and revealing films the world has to offer to our community in order to produce new ways of thinking and inform our own work in the world.