Small File Media Festival: Screening and Workshop

Part of MoMI Lab

Bringing together an international community of artists pioneering small-file eco-media, the Small File Media Festival (SFMF) comes to New York City for the first time for this free screening and workshop. “An all-out intervention to save the world, one pixel at a time,” SFMF raises awareness around the high carbon footprint of streaming media with its annual showcase of small-file treasures. Small-file videos run at 1.44 MB per minute by harnessing a range of techniques, from filming with obsolete cameras to compressing video with open-source algorithms. Designed for lightness and resilience, this tiny bitrate allows the small file to thrive in places where electricity and internet access are precarious.

The selected shorts in this program showcase the breadth and depth of the small-file video for those who never considered the future could be so small. It includes contemplative home videos, experimental animations, poetic revelations, and pixelated dreams.

The screening will be followed by a workshop inviting participants to make their own small-file videos with an introduction to various video compression techniques. This program invites participants to collectively, radically, and creatively rethink computational culture and sustainability practices.

Schedule

1:00 – 2:30 p.m. Screening: Low Resolution, High Resilience, Selections from the Small File Media Festival. Bartos Screening Room. Free with RSVP, limited space available.

3:00 – 4:30 p.m. Small File Workshop: Introduction to Video Compression, led by Isabella Haid. Meet in MoMI Lab Classroom. Free with RSVP, limited space available. Laptops encouraged, computers will be available to those who need.

Shorts Program: Low Resolution, High Resilience, selections from the Small File Media Festival

Where this flower blooms

Ato Ngam. 2026, 4 mins., 5.2 MB. Canada.

The Wake

Adolfo Bermudez. 2026, 4 mins., 5.4 MB. Canada.

Does this look swollen

Riley Zilkie. 2026 , 2 mins., 2.5 MB. Canada.

digi \\ flow

Oliver Hunt. 2025, 1 mins., .68 MB. France.

Shavesong

Valentin Sismann. 2025, 5 mins., 7.1 MB. France.

Missing Remittances

Mohamed Allam. 2026, 5 mins., 6 MB. Egypt.

Welcome to Canada Ludmila, Katia, Bobby September 1994 Vancouver, BC.

Dev Petrovic. 2026, 7 mins., 7.4 MB. Canada.

the longest of trips

Natalia Ludmila. 2024, 2 mins., 2.3 MB. Mexico.

5\e3p

Dom Todd. 2026, 1 mins., 2.15 MB. United Kingdom.

Turquoise Tile Echoes

Reza Negaresh. 2026, 4 mins., 4.3 MB. Canada.

Driver’s License

José J. Martínez. 2026, 9 mins., 11.2 MB. Columbia.

Before the Beginning

Yasaman Roohi. 2026, 1 min., 1 MB. Iran.

So Many Things Are Not So

Mark Burchick. 2024, 13 mins., 12.6 MB. United States.

AN AUDIBLE MAP OF THE FIELD ON THOMAS STREET

Roanna Kee. 2026, 2 mins., 2.4 MB. Ireland.

Slootwater

Leo Mokkola. 2024, 10 mins., 14.5 MB. Finland.

Isabella Haid is an artist and researcher from Texas focused on the labor and environmental histories of computer technology. Before joining the Museum of the Moving Image, she was a Fellow at the Center for Experimental Humanities at Bard College and Visiting Researcher at the Border Tech Lab at U.T. Austin.

The Small File Media Society was founded in 2020 to raise awareness of the high carbon footprint of streaming media. The festival proposes alternative solutions for media practice, as well as modes of thinking otherwise in media theory, which converged in an annual live and online festival of sustainable experimental media. The Small File team is a network of academics, researchers, curators, artists, and activists, dedicated to promoting the use of Small-File Ecomedia and the research behind it. Starting from an online festival in 2020, Small Files have found their ways into festivals, workshops, installations and panels including in Canada, Egypt, Mexico, Iran and Bangladesh.