OKLAHOMA CITY — With a focus on the communal spirits and hardworking behind-the-scenes crews that it takes to create an indie movie, the film festival world has always, at its heart, been about community and about bringing cinema-loving audiences closer to the forefront of the art form.
But there might be no film festival in the world that emphasizes the importance and power of the audience quite like the Manhattan Short Film Festival.
Celebrating its 25th year in 2023, the Manhattan Short Film Festival was launched to not only spotlight the best in creative, upstart, bite-sized movie-making but to allow the fans and audiences themselves to be the judges, rather than relying on the usual panel of industry insiders and celebrities.
Now screening annually in 500 cities around the world, covering six continents, the festival runs simultaneously for one week, allowing worldwide audiences the opportunity to cast their votes for Best Film, Best Screenplay, and the gender-neutral Best Actor.
OKCMOA is Okla premiere venue
As OKC’s premiere venue for the festival, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art looks forward to the screening week as one of the biggest film events of the year when it kicks off Thursday, September 28th, and runs through Sunday, October 8th.
“Manhattan Short is a longstanding favorite of our community that, by popular demand, we bring back each year,” said OKCMOA’s Head of Film Programming, Lisa Broad. “We are always excited to give our audience the opportunity to vote on their favorites for this eagerly anticipated program.”
Community driven
Central to the Manhattan Short Film Festival is its unique voting system, putting the winner-crowning power in the hands of audiences worldwide. But it hasn’t always been that way.
When founding director and head programmer Nicholas Mason launched the festival (largely on his own) in 1998, he simply screened some short films on the side of a rented truck in New York City’s Little Italy.
The next year, the outdoor screening was moved to Union Square Park and featured the more traditional judge’s panel, boasting names like Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
But in the months and years following the September 11th, 2001 terror attacks, Mason began seeing greater worldwide interest and an influx in submissions from the global filmmaking community, and that sparked the idea of taking it away from Manhattan exclusively and inviting the entire world to the party.
By 2004, the festival’s ten chosen shorts were being screened in multiple cities simultaneously and the audiences had become the judges themselves.
“It was just an idea, but the public blew it up,” Mason told Free Press. “We only had seven cities and seven venues in 2004, but from there, the public just transformed it and turned it into a star.”
‘Cultural nerve centers’
Those seven venues in 2004 grew to 72 venues across more than 30 states in 2005 and has now grown into a legitimately global week-long festival with over 500 cities hosting screenings each year.
According to Mason, maintaining that kind of community and worldwide participation is all down to the support and efforts of the venues themselves.
“A key element which I believe has made it a success is the venues that have gotten involved, places like the Oklahoma City Museum of Art,” he said. “Those venues, they’re like cultural nerve centers. They really are community venues.”
Since expanding to its audience-driven, community-focused model, Manhattan Short has relied on the enthusiasm and spirit of the local venues to spread the word to the film lovers and patrons in their cities, and Mason says that makes all the difference.
“The museums are especially great,” he said. “They take this concept and they’ve just raised it to another level really making it an annual event. I’d say 90% of the people that turn up have definitely been more than once. This is their annual event that they come out to and feel invested in because that’s what real community does.”
‘Time in our lives’
Opening up the field not only to a global audience but to a diverse global community of filmmakers has allowed Manhattan Short a unique perspective on the prevailing attitudes and emotions throughout the world each year, especially as young short-makers tend to be particularly dialed into the times.
For Mason, that’s one of the most important elements that really sets this festival apart.
“I’ve found that the entries that come into this festival are really more revealing of how the world is feeling than anything else,” he said. “We can all identify with love for a family member, love for a sport, love for food. And they’re very good at intertwining that story around the cultures and politics within their boundaries or country.”
These short pieces of art, bursting with life and culture and the pulses of their own communities, create a snapshot of the world in those years and in those moments.
“I found that these short films, in a way, reminded me of Bob Dylan songs that were really current and relevant,” Mason said. “They depict the time in our lives.”
The Manhattan Short Film Festival runs from Thursday, September 28th through Sunday, October 8th at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, with individual ballots and voting available to all audience members following each screening.
For showtimes, tickets, and more information, visit okcmoa.com and manhattanshort.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
