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Open Call: Single Channel International Video Festival 2026

Type: Exhibition Opportunities [View all]
Posted by: Snake House VT
Deadline: Sat, January 24th, 2026

Just one look, that’s all it took*

Artists are invited to submit a short video for this year’s theme of "seeing".

Our 2026 open call, can you see me now?, centers “the gaze” with works that consider seeing from points poetic to political and their intersections. In Walid Ra’ad’s Miraculous Beginnings part two, (one part of his three part video, Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs), the operator of a government surveillance camera (#18) assigned to monitor human activities on the seaside promenade in Beirut, turns his camera away from the designated targets every day towards the setting sun. A simple shift of view becomes a transgressive gesture and perhaps the only logical response to an illogical situation. Where will we look as the sun sets?

With the introduction in the 18th century of the panoramic picture to the West, a totalizing image of the natural and built world became a reality. Although “an all encompassing view” remains a physical impossibility for the human eye, the possibility of being all seeing and all knowing is at our fingertips with drones and a smartphone - surveillance as entertainment. 

What are the destructive / captivating powers of looking? Ask Lot’s wife, Eurydice, Medusa, or James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. 

Is the power of looking and being looked at equal? Behold! It’s there in the word: to hold, to possess, to claim and control. Just one look. What are we taking?

“There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.” Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure. Translated from the French by Robert Hurley. 

 *Just One Look, music and lyrics by Doris Troy and Gregory Carroll - recorded by Doris Troy in 1963. 

 

For guidelines and to submit entries please follow this link

Deadline for submissions: January 24, 2026

$15 submission fee 

Dates and locations for 2026 Festival screenings: 

March 27, 2026 - Burlington, VT

April 21, 2026 - Bethel, Maine

 

Posted on Fri, December 5th, 2025
Expires on Sat, January 24th, 2026

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