Ecomedia festival challenges hi-def streaming consumption — SFU experts available

Can cinema be sustainable? This weekend’s lo-fi Small File Media Festival says yes, showing great cinema doesn’t have to mean great big files.

The two-day Small File Media Festival celebrates small-file ecomedia, showcasing low bandwidth movies compressed to just 1.44 megabytes per minute — a tiny fraction of the 60 to 350 megabytes per minute for high-def video. 

“Driven by high-resolution streaming media, cryptocurrency, machine learning, and other tech apps, information and communication technologies (ICT) emissions now exceed those of aviation,” says Laura U. Marks, festival founder and Grant Strate University professor at SFU’s School for Contemporary Arts. 

“Ironically, the more efficient a technology is, the more resources it uses. The ultimate solution to mitigate the footprint of ICT is to reduce use.”

Marks and a team of researchers at SFU are also creating a tiny AI model to help tackle the environmental challenge of video streaming, exploring ideas such as using less precise computing, tiny language models, designing hardware that runs on one or no graphics processors, planning for energy efficiency from the start, and true-cost accounting.

Since its debut in 2020, the annual festival has screened over 400 submissions from more than 24 countries.

The Small File Media Festival takes place October 17 and 18, 2025 at The Cinematheque, Vancouver. SFU experts are available for interviews on sustainable media, tiny AI, and the environmental cost of streaming.

VIEW OFFICIAL FESTIVAL SELECTIONS AND SCHEDULE

Available SFU experts

LAURA U. MARKS, she/her, Grant Strate University professor at the School for Contemporary Arts, founder of Small File Media Festival 
lmarks@sfu.ca 
Expertise: energy usage of ICT, carbon footprint of streaming media, media ecology, non-Western media histories, aesthetics, experimental cinema

JESS MACCORMACK, they/them, interdisciplinary artist, digital artist, graduate studies, School for Contemporary Arts 
jessmaccormack@gmail.com   
Expertise: AI-generated images and videos; illustration; animation; installation; performance; GIFs

ALLY LI, she/her, researcher, computing science 
kehui_li@sfu.ca  
Expertise: visual computing, sustainable AI

Contact

ROBYN STUBBS, SFU Communications & Marketing  
604.376.0971 | robyn_stubbs@sfu.ca 

Simon Fraser University 
Communications & Marketing | SFU Media Experts Directory 
778.782.3210

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