Flex Obscura Series & Festival celebrates the breadth of visual expression and innovation in film. We love weird and things that live in the in-between spaces! Flex Obscura Series and Festival is structured to allow for expansive play across a season of visual, sonic and film exploration and community learning.
Our passion is to celebrate new voices and new vocabulary in visual and sonic forms that are expansive and experimental with a focus on fostering inclusivity and promoting emerging talent. Flex Obscura Series and Festival embraces a wide range of genres, styles, and perspectives. It acts as a catalyst for change, inspiring a new generation of filmmakers to challenge conventional norms and push the boundaries of storytelling.
Our call for submissions is open!
We proudly accept submissions exclusively through FilmFreeway.
Flex Obscura officially launched on April 19th, 2024 with a launch event held at Elastic Arts featuring an evening of networking, community, curated short films, filmmaker Q&As and the unveiling for our official call for submissions! Flex Obscura was founded and is co-curated/co-directed by Jonathan Woods, Latoya Hunter & Katrina Brook Flores.
Flex Obscura offers a full year of programming geared at cultivating community, engaging excellence and celebrating innovation in filmmaking.
This is done through a Film Industry Night Series & 3 uniquely designed festival offerings over the 2024-2025 presenting year.
The Series
June 12, 2024 (6PM-9PM)
August 14, 2024 (6PM-9PM)
The series delves into various film industry topics and areas of interest and is hosted by the Flex Obscura team in partnership with Elastic Arts. Each evening is a focused exploration through the particular lens of one expert in their field(s) within the film industry. Through a storytelling and Q&A format, we invite audiences into the conversation in hopes of expanding it.
The Festival Offerings
October 2-6, 2024 - Flex Obscura
@ AfroFuturist Weekend Festival
February 2025 - For The Love of Film Futures
May 2025 - Flex Obscura Film Festival
These film festival offerings give audiences and filmmakers
a unique experience, each with a particular focus:
____________AfroFuturist Weekend Festival
This event is a 5-day celebration of Black artists making forward-looking work that envisions radically positive futures for Black people. Deploying new technologies, drawing upon history, and subverting/inverting exploitative hierarchies, Afrofuturism puts Black people at the center of narratives about the future.There will be performances, visual art installations, video presentations, panel discussions, and immersive experiences meant to generate a call to action to realize these visions. This will be the first year Flex Obscura will fold a meaningful micro film festival into the fold of AfroFuturist Weekend Festival! Attending Filmmakers and Official Selections are sure to have a unique Chicago experience
We seek films that offer a unique perspective on the Black, African and African Diasporic experience. We seek films offering forward-looking work that envisions radically positive futures for Black, African and African Diasporic people. Deploying new technologies, drawing upon history, and subverting/inverting exploitative hierarchies, Afrofuturism puts Black people at the center of narratives about the future and we seek films that bring these visions and stories to life through cinema.
____________For The Love of Film Futures
This 2-day micro film festival enlists highly curated workshops, demonstrations, immersive experiences and play in bringing together filmmakers, audiences, industry experts and film enthusiasts with an express interest in pushing boundaries in storytelling and techniques.
We seek profoundly experimental and out-of-the-box storytelling. We program films that challenge conventions through their use of storytelling, narrative and design as well as films that play with new technologies, explore new uses for old technologies and that push the boundaries of what is possible with film, art film and digital storytelling. We also encourage films that play with immersive, multichannel audio formats to apply, as our presenting venue has a 16 omni-directional Hemisphere speaker system available known as CLEAT (Chicago Laboratory for Electro-Acoustic Theatre) conceived and built by Isobel Audio.
____________Flex Obscura Film Festival
We welcome back our juried and audience choice winner films and projects from AfroFuturist Weekend Festival and For The Love of Film Futures for a best of the fests film extravaganza. In addition to the best of the fests screenings, we program additional gems from previous Official Selections as well as new Official Selections that celebrate excellence in filmmaking, storytelling and innovation.
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At each film festival we screen Official Selections and honor filmmakers with both juried awards and the coveted Audience Choice Award. Winners from AfroFuturist Weekend Festival (October) & For The Love of Film Futures (February) are invited back to screen at Flex Obscura Film Festival in May to compete for the Best of the Fests awards. Additional films will also be invited to screen as part of the Official Selection. Beyond the Best of the Fests awards, additional awards for all films in competition will be announced.
At all festival experiences, Official Selection filmmakers are encouraged to attend and to participate in Q&A sessions following their screenings. Possible virtual Q&A opportunities may be provided with our live audiences to filmmakers who cannot attend in-person.
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As part of our commitment to diverse voices, particular consideration for our festivals are given to projects directed, co-directed, produced and/or written by B&IPOC filmmakers and visual storytellers with a particular focus on Black, African Diasporic, Indigenous and/or LGBTQIA2S+ identifying voices. We also highly encourage participation from the Chicagoland area.
Flex Obscura Series & Film Festival proudly accepts entries on FilmFreeway, the world's #1 way to enter film festivals and creative contests. Find us on FilmFreeway HERE to learn more or use the FilmFreeway submit button below.
All Additional Inquiries: flexobscura@elasticarts.org
