Flex Obscura is the umbrella to a yearlong series culminating in The Flex Obscura Film Festival. The series includes (2) amazing opportunities for filmmakers submit films to be considered as Official Selections that are then eligible to be In-Competition at The Flex Obscura Film Festival.
Each part of the series and The Flex Obscura Film Festival are uniquely focused, in-person experiences with live audiences!
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.
Our 2024-2025 Presenting Year At-A-Glance
3 Industry Nights
Flex Obscura Launch Event // April 19, 2024
An Evening with Floyd Webb // June 12, 2024
Industry Night with Special Guest TBA // August 14, 2024
2 Presenting Series with Live Screenings
Films @ AfroFuturist Weekend Festival // October 2-6, 2024
For The Love of Film Futures // February 2025
1 Culminating Film Festival
The Flex Obscura Film Festival // May 2025
Films selected to screen at AfroFuturist Weekend Festival & For The Love of Film Futures are automatically eligible to be in-competition at The Flex Obscura Film Festival 2025!
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 an 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.
Welcome to The Flex Obscura!
You are welcome to browse below for more details on each part of our inaugural presenting year and The Flex Obscura Festival.
Industry Nights
Industry Nights delve 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 Presenting Series
The presenting series gives audiences and filmmakers
a unique in-person screening experience, each with a particular focus:
____________Films @ 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. 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 screening series 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 Official Selections from AfroFuturist Weekend Festival and For The Love of Film Futures for a best of the fests film extravaganza along with other Official Selections that celebrate excellence in filmmaking, storytelling and innovation to be part of the festival!
*********
At both of the presenting series & The Flex Obscura Film Festival, we screen Official Selections and honor filmmakers with juried awards and the coveted Audience Choice Award.
Official Selections from AfroFuturist Weekend Festival (October) & For The Love of Film Futures (February) are invited back to screen at The Flex Obscura Film Festival in May and automatically eligible to be in-competition! Additional films submitted to The Flex Obscura Film Festival are also invited to screen as part of the Official Selection and may be additionally invited to be in-competition. 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.
*********
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
