Gregory R.R. Crosby has directed CineManiacs since the night it began, in 2017, in an East Austin room he had to talk someone into lending him. Five editions later he still programs the whole festival himself. We sat down with him as the 5th edition opened for entries.
Five editions. Did you think it would last?
Honestly, no. The first year I told myself if we did one good night, that was enough — a dozen films, some friends, a projector I borrowed and prayed over. But the crowd came back the next year, and brought people. A festival is really just a habit a city agrees to keep. Austin kept it.
You've never programmed a feature. Not once. Why so strict?
Because the short form doesn't need a chaperone. The second you put a feature on the schedule, the shorts become the opening act — the thing people talk over while they find their seats. I wasn't going to do that to films I love. Shorts only, forever. It's the one rule I'll never bend.
The second you put a feature on the schedule, the shorts become the opening act. I wasn't going to do that to films I love.Gregory R.R. Crosby, Festival Director
You still watch every submission. That's a lot of films.
It is, and Artur thinks I'm insane for it. But the day I stop watching them all is the day the festival becomes something I'd be embarrassed by. The whole promise is that a real person watched your film. I'm not going to outsource the one thing that makes us worth entering.
You skipped the 2020/2021 edition. What happened?
We run every two years, and the 2020/2021 edition should have happened. But the world was still upside down and I wasn't going to put on a hollow, half-empty version of CineManiacs just to keep the streak alive. So we cancelled it — the only time we've ever gone dark. We came back in 2023 hungrier than ever, and honestly the gap reminded me how much the room means. You don't miss it until it's gone.
What are you looking for?
A film that had to exist. You can feel it almost immediately — whether someone made this because they couldn't not, or because they had a weekend and a camera. Both are fine, but only one of them tends to end up on our screen. And I love a film that's a little too much. Too weird, too raw, too sincere. Restraint is overrated in a short.
Why Austin, specifically?
Because this town will show up for a block of shorts by people it's never heard of, on a Tuesday, and treat it like an event. That audience doesn't exist everywhere. Austin takes film seriously without the industry stiffness — no one's here to be seen, they're here to watch. That's the perfect crowd for the short form, which lives or dies on a room's attention.
Best moment in five editions?
Every year there's a second, right after a film ends, where the whole room is silent a beat too long and then exhales at once. That sound. I'd run the entire festival for that sound. Everything else — the scheduling, the logistics, Artur talking me out of bad ideas — is just what it takes to earn a few of those seconds each October.
Advice for someone submitting for the fifth edition?
Send the film you're slightly nervous about. Not the safe one. The nervous one is almost always the good one, and it's definitely the one I want to see. Put it on FilmFreeway and let it meet a room.
CineManiacs is an independent short film festival in Austin, Texas. Submissions for the 5th edition are open now on FilmFreeway.