Calling all RGV artists and creatives: We want to see YOUR experimental short films!

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We’ve partnered with Kristin Montez and the UTRGV Creative Writing department to host CINE FUTUROS: An experimental short film showcase disrupting mainstream narratives of culture and identity through multidisciplinary forms!

This is your chance to work on your own or with a group to create an experimental short film that explores one or more of the following themes:

Personal & Collective Memory

Reinterpreting history, folklore, and lived experiences of the border.

Language & Identity

Visual storytelling that explores bilingualism, intersectionality, code-switching, translanguaging, and cultural hybridity.

Borders as Lived Spaces

Challenging political, physical, and metaphoricalborders through new perspectives.

Resistance & Reimagination

Stories of resilience, migration, and the reshapingof dominant narratives.

Myth & Speculation

Re-envisioning the border through dreamlike, surreal, or speculative storytelling.

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Eligibility and Media Specifications

• Films must be between 30 seconds and 5 minutes in length
• Open to UTRGV students, faculty and alumni, as well as creatives across the Rio Grande Valley. Folks of all ages, experience levels and backgrounds are welcome to submit!
• Multimedia works are welcome including:
  
  • Analog (Super 8, 16mm, VHS, found footage, collage film)
  • Digital (DSLR, mirrorless, cinema cameras)
  • Mobile (films shot entirely on smartphones)
  • Stop motion, animation, and mixed-media projects
• Films must be self-contained and complete works rather than excerpts from longer projects.
• Visual works can be adapted from any form of writing (poetry, essays, abstracts,testimonios, etc) but must experiment with the film form in some capacity.

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We encourage folks to have fun, push boundaries and experiment with the various ways you can create moving image works.

• Non-narrative structures
• Poetics, abstract, and collage
• Visual essays
• Hybrid works
• Performance-based cinema
• Interactive and audience-participatory elements

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If you have questions about your film or the showcase, contact Kristin at kristin.montez01@utrgv.edu

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Submissions close Friday, August 1, 2025.

Selected films will be notified before or by August 11, 2025.

Showcase and artist Q&A will be held on Saturday August 23, 2025 from 7-10pm at ENTRE Film Center (415 W. Jackson Ave. Harlingen, TX 78550).

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