BIMA’s Manhattan Short Film Festival returns Sept. 24-27
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, September 15, 2026
The 29th annual Manhattan Short Film Festival is being hosted by the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art Sept. 24-27 at the Frank Buxton Auditorium.
The festival includes 10 international short films, which will be screened simultaneously across the world at over 500 locations. At each participating venue, viewers can vote on Best Film and Best Actor awards. By virtue of their selection by Manhattan Short, each short film is automatically Oscar-qualified. Past shorts have been considered for Academy Awards, with two having won the prize. Each audience member will be given a brochure and a ballot to vote at the Frank Buxton Auditorium. Winning filmmakers also receive cash and filmmaking accessories to further their talent.
From stories about a young boy crossing the U.S. – Mexico border to a man in hospice care whose day seems to keep repeating, the films at this year’s Manhattan Short showings all come from different parts of the globe, including the United States of America, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom, Moldova, Russia, Cuba, Georgia, Hungary and Mexico.
The main host of the film showings is Bainbridge Islander Tj Faddis. Faddis is a self-proclaimed ‘Movie Maven’ having worked at the historic Lynwood Theatre since 1984, where she managed and curated foreign films and documentaries from 2000 until 2011.
In 1978, Faddis and her family moved to Bainbridge Island, and before her work at the Lynwood Theatre, she didn’t have any experience managing a movie theater.
It was 1984 and Faddis was working for a consulting business out of somebody’s home on the island. That’s when she got connected to managing the Lynwood Theatre, where she learned for the first time how to handle 35-millimeter film and projectors, amongst other things.
At that time, Lynwood Theatre was the only show on the island, open five days a week with one matinee on Saturday and one on Sunday. Bainbridge Island Cinemas opened in 1998, and the idea sprang up to turn the Lynwood Theatre into an art house.
In the early 1990s, Faddis convinced her boss to let her take the month of October and screen foreign films. “The lovely thing is that I came to enjoy that group of people who came to the foreign films,” Faddis said in a podcast she did with the Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network. “We wanted another flavor of film. It was well attended and people responded; it seemed like a good idea to turn the Lynwood Theatre into a foreign film art house.”
In March 2000, it became just that.
“I just remember being transported to places I had never been transported before with American film,” Faddis said about foreign films. “That was where my love began. I get to inhabit their part of the universe and I think it’s such a gift.”
In 2000, Manhattan Short founder Nicholas Mason called the office of the Lynwood Theatre, when Faddis answered the phone. “When I viewed the collection of the short films Nick had shown in 2000, it was abundantly apparent he had collected some powerful shorts and he wanted to show the world,” Faddis told The Review. Faddis then signed on for the 2001 short film festival and has not stopped being an advocate and exhibitor for the festival since, she shared.
In 2012, Faddis worked alongside Greg Robinson and his staff on the soon-to-be Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. “It was a mind-expanding experience to go from holding onto old Bainbridge customs to embracing new Bainbridge possibilities,” she said. “The auditorium was the first public space to be finished, so Greg utilized me and my husband Chuck to keep the place up and running.”
Shortly after BIMA opened in 2013, Faddis began programming film series, bringing the annual short film festival with her. Today, she continues to partner with BIMA, serving as a guest curator and event organizer for the museum’s film programming. “Working with the people of BIMA was a joy which makes my heart soar whenever I think of those days,” said Faddis. “Which is why I’m always excited to bring Manhattan Shorts each year to my old stomping grounds.”
The original festival began around 1996, Faddis shared, with a 35-millimeter film projector, a white panel truck and numerous folding chairs in a Manhattan park. “It was a modest beginning for a man with big ambitions and drive,” Faddis said about Mason. “Today, the collection is seen around the world with enough eyes to qualify each short to be seen by the short-films selection committee of the Academy Awards.”
Faddis has not only been an advocate for the Manhattan Short Film Festival since 2001, but now she is part of the panel that selects the shorts for each year’s collection. “I look for the same criteria that I did when curating films for the Lynwood Theatre,” said Faddis. “Did the film stir intellect or curiosity? Did it teach me something? Did the film touch my funny bone? Did the film move my heart? Did it stir my soul? This is what art does, and it changes us and challenges us to open ourselves, share and become better people and grow more informed about what it is to be human. You exit the theater with your senses abuzz and a desperate need to talk with someone to help process all you have experienced.”
For more information on BIMA’s Manhattan Short Film Festival, visit https://www.biartmuseum.org/event/manhattan-short-film-festival-2026/