The inaugural Migrating Forms is now open for business! Everybody rush the gates…

For those of you who don’t remember: 2008 marked the 15th and final New York Underground Film Festival, the granddaddy of all underground fests. To fill the void, Migrating Forms was created to carry on the grand NYUFF tradition as well as push forward new concepts of film and video art. This new festival is run by Kevin McGarry and Nellie Killian, two of the three co-festival directors of the last NYUFF. (The third was Mo Johnston, who doesn’t seem to be involved with Migrating Forms.)

Here’s Migrating Forms brief statement about this new venture, found on their website:

Migrating Forms grew out of the New York Underground Film Festival (1993-2008), a grassroots endeavor that evolved into a landmark international venue for documentary, experimental and avant-garde narrative film and video. Over the past fifteen years, notions of “underground” have changed and NYUFF has transformed. Migrating Forms continues in the tradition of supporting and exhibiting underground film and video, focusing on filmmakers working to reinvent and recontextualize established practices to foster new forms of media art.

The festival will run next year at approximately at the same time when NYUFF used to: April 15-19. Deadlines for submission are:

Early Deadline:
December 1, 2008
$30

Regular Deadline:
December 15, 2008
$40

Late deadline:
January 15, 2009
$50

Actually, regarding those entry fees, the fest says:

It’s unfortunate that we must collect entry fees to offset costs of producing the festival. We are working to develop an infrastructure that will enable us to operate without entry fees. Until then, thank you for sharing your work with us and for supporting us through this broken system. We know it sucks.

Plus, if you’ve screened at NYUFF, then your entry fee is waived. Plus, you can contact them about other waivers in extreme cases.

Finally, Migrating Forms is holding a special screening tonight (10/21) at the Brooklyn BAM Cinematek at 7:00 p.m. They will be holding the World Premiere of Jennifer Montgomery’s Deliver, an all-female remake of Deliverance. Honestly, that sounds just like something NYUFF would screen.

Go to the screening, submit your film and visit the Migrating Forms website for more info.

And check out the Underground Film Journal’s list of film festivals for more great underground fests to submit to.