Now in its NINTH year, the CMG Short Film Festival presents four programs of LGBTQ short films representing the very best of our vast and diverse community’s filmic offerings. Besides attending the larger festivals and personal referrals, we winnow through hundreds of films submitted through the FilmFreeway submission platform, to come up with the less than 40 films that comprise our programs.
To promote community, the CMG Short Film Festival likes to give an edge in the selection process to local (Los Angeles Area) filmmakers and talent. Being local doesn’t guarantee acceptance, of course, but we very much like the idea of creating a “family” of local artists who know and support each other. For some, ours will be the only LGBTQ film festival their film will appear in locally, and we recognize and welcome the unique responsibility this imposes on us. To keep faith with this community, we have a generous comps policy for filmmakers, cast and crew.
We are proud to offer “grass roots” submission pricing, to encourage submissions from less well-financed filmmakers. Thanks to FilmFreeway, we can afford to do this. For those who might want to avoid any submission fee altogether, please be mindful that this festival is an all proceeds benefit for AIDS Walk Los Angeles, as it has been since its inception. (This also means that films whose subject matter is the HIV epidemic score high on our “relevance” criterion.)
NOTE: We have in past years also presented a CLOSING NIGHT PARTY at a local bar. While these films are not "in competition" for our audience and jury awards, we do provide an appreciative audience.
We have an audience favorite award, determined by balloting, and jury awards for best comedy or musical, best drama, and best (regardless of gender) in each of those two categories. The jury is also empowered to create additional awards for anything they deem worthy of that kind of recognition. None of the awards has a cash value.