In 1999, after watching The Matrix (Lily and Lana Wachowski), I left the theatre certain that I was living in a simulation. If only I could find a leather trench and a way to the underground revolution, I could fight the computer overlords and look as cool as Keanu Reeves while doing it. I was ten years old. Then the Columbine shooting happened, and I became afraid to go to school. It seemed that this reality was much more frightening than the one in the film that intelligent machines generated.

In its sixth edition this year, the Small File Media Festival was divided into five screening programs, including a Blue and Red Room event that Mena El Shazly & Radek Przedpełski curated. I interpreted this as a reference to the iconic scene in The Matrix where Neo (Reeves) is given the choice between a blue pill, to remain in ignorance, or a red pill, to confront the unsettling truth. Presented at The Cinematheque in Vancouver, the festival seeks to raise awareness about the carbon impact of streaming on the planet.

This edition grew out of founder Laura Mark’s Guggenheim Fellowship, Small Files for a Small World, and included videos that individuals who received training from the Small File media team have made. The result consists of approximately five hours of experimental film, most of these being short videos of under five minutes,

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