Worldwide Short Film Festival Gearing Up The 2006 Edition ...

I saw those portugese zombies last year too. Awesome short. One of the best I've seen in years. I doubt they'll have anything to compare this year, but you never know.

This Worldwide Short Film festival in Toronto is one of the largest and most prestigeous short film festivals in the world. We're not talking cheesey stuff shot on cell phones. We're talking top quality, award winning shorts, from 5 to 30 minutes long, mostly North American premieres, many on 16 and 35MM, from every continent. Many of them putting Hollywood features to shame in terms of acting, story, and in some cases even production value.

WELL worth visiting. If you like genre stuff, check out the two Midnight Mania (excellent, twisted and horror shorts) and Out There screenings (sci-fi). Many of the shorts that play at this festival end up winning Oscars. Two years ago, the stunning animation RYAN won a top award, on its way to Oscar.

If you are an aspiring filmmaker, the Symposiums and workshops running in the daytime are also unbelievably good value: for a few bucks each you can sit in with editors, filmmakers, distributors, and screenwriters and learn how you too can make brilliant shorts, get them out there, and move onto features as next step.

The Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto- check it out!