Festival director Andy Gately is gearing up for next year’s Austin Underground Film Festival and is looking for shorts only, i.e. anything 40 minutes and under. Deadlines and fees are as such:

Early Deadline:
Jan. 15 (fee $15)

Regular Deadline
Feb. 1 (fee $20)

Looks to me that Andy is accepting just about any genre, but here’s his list:

* narratives
* freeform
* documentaries
* experimental
* animation
* music videos
* silent
* foreign
* works-in-progress, provided they will be completed by event date

All films in languages other than English must be subtitled or dubbed in English, unless dialogue is nonessential to comprehension and appreciation.

You can send your entry in on VHS or DVD (NTSC only, natch) and there’s no official entry form, but for stuff you need to include and for AUFF’s mailing address, please visit their official site.

For last year’s fest, you can read the Underground Film Journal’s review of the shorts that played. Of course, I just saw them on DVD, but the actual fest sounds like it was a lot of fun and you can read a brief report of the one-night only screening by filmmaking troublemaker Mike Z here.

Finally, looks like Andy — very wisely — converted the AUFF site to a WordPress blog, so go check out the homepage. And again, the official submission guidelines page is here. Remember: If this is the first you’re hearing of AUFF and you submit, please let Andy know (seriously, it’s one of the guidelines).

P.S. Andy writes to tell me that he’ll be premiering his own latest experimental short at next year’s fest. Cool!