The 17th annual Chicago Underground Film Festival has officially put out the call for entries and, having moved the fest up by several months from last year’s edition, the final deadline isn’t very far away at all. It’s in about a month, less for the early deadline. So, get your films in stat! Let’s get right to it. Here’s the deadlines:

Early Deadline:
March 1
$30

Late Deadline:
March 15
$40

The festival will run this year June 24 to July 1 and will screen once again at the Gene Siskel Film Center. CUFF is the world’s longest running underground film festival and shows a broad range of quirky, challenging and unique films. But, what does the longest running underground fest consider to be “underground”? Here’s their mission statement:

The Chicago Underground Film Festival exists to showcase the defiantly independent filmmaker. Our mission is to promote films adn videos that dissent radically in form, technique, or content from the “indie” mainstream and to present adventurous works that challenge and transcend commercial and audience expectations … if you suspect your film is “underground,” it probably is.

They also accept films in the following categories: Narrative Feature, Documentary Feature, Experimental, Animation
Narrative Short, Documentary Short, and Music Video. (Note: A “feature” film is one running longer than 60 minutes.) The fest does give out awards for each category, plus two more awards: A Made in Chicago award and an Audience Award.

You can check out last year’s lineup to get a feel for what CUFF is interested in. To submit, you can either visit their official submission guidelines page or submit via Withoutabox.