CineManiacs started because a handful of Austin film nerds were tired of watching great shorts vanish into the feed. Five editions later — biennial, minus the 2020/2021 edition the pandemic took from us — that's still the whole idea.
A short film is the hardest thing in cinema to make well and the easiest to lose — buried three taps deep on a platform that never meant to show it to anyone. We think that's a shame worth fixing, one packed screening at a time.
So every October we pull roughly seventy of the best shorts we can find, from Austin and from twenty-odd countries, and give them what a stream never will: a real audience, a big screen, and a filmmaker in the room to talk about it afterward. No feature envy. No filler. Just the short form, taken as seriously as it deserves — and enjoyed as loudly as it deserves too.
No features, no exceptions. The short form is the entire point, not a warm-up act.
Every block is built by hand, watched to death, and ordered on purpose. The lineup is the art.
We build the schedule around Q&As and hangs. The conversation is half the festival.
Serious about the films, never about ourselves. This is a party for people who love cinema.
Gregory founded CineManiacs in 2017 and has run every edition since. A lifelong short-film evangelist, he programs the festival personally — watching every submission that comes in — and is happiest in the seconds after a film ends, when a whole room exhales at once. He's exacting about the work and warm about the filmmakers, and he'll talk your ear off about a two-minute short he saw years ago.
Artur keeps the whole machine running — submissions, scheduling, filmmaker travel, and the thousand logistics of turning an East Austin venue into a festival for four days. For most people who enter, his is the first voice from CineManiacs they hear, and he's known for answering fast, plainly, and like a human being. If the festival feels personal rather than corporate, that's largely his doing.
We're easy to reach and we actually reply.