323 filmmakers 613 films 36,780 seconds
In 2003 artists Jason Simon and Moyra Davey decided to hold an event at their barn in upstate New York. They sent postcards to friends and colleagues inviting them to visit the first Saturday after July 4th, bringing with them a one-minute film. No one knew what to expect, but nearly 100 people showed up. This was the birth of The One Minute Film Festival, an event that would go on for 10 years. The One Minute Film Festival was about films and socializing, but also much more. On the day of each Festival, artists, writers, and film- and video-makers (and their friends and families) would arrive in the afternoon with food and drink and their one-minute movie. After sunset the movies began, usually lasting two or three hours. Many people camped, others made the late-night drive home, and more would stay in nearby inns or with friends in the Narrowsburg, New York, area of western Sullivan County, near the Pennsylvania border. Most of the filmmakers were in attendance, but films were accepted that were sent in advance from those who could not be there. Each year the participant list
grew. A festive competitive spirit grew as artists tried to top what they had done the year before, but for a few brief hours in the barn it didn’t matter who did what: everyone watched each film, giving each one the same attention as the last. Everyone’s efforts were applauded. Looking back over the ten years of The Festival it is apparent how this event also became a political and cultural marker of time, encapsulating a decade spanning the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial crisis and its slow-motion recovery, and the Occupy Movement. YouTube was born in 2005, and its omnipresent nature of short-form online video has changed the relationship between video and culture as a whole. Simon and Davey commenced The One Minute Film Festival before YouTube, making shortform video an event to be experienced together before the Internet had us watching in isolation. Thus The Festival became a backdrop for critical reflections on film and video art, and a critical frame of reference (and social gathering) for contributors. The