Light House Studio Presents: The 4th Annual Odds & Ends Film Festival
CONTACT:
Kristen Dillehunt, Light House Studio,
(434) 293-6992, [email protected].
lighthousestudio.org/oddsandends
Charlottesville, VA, February 13, 2026 – Light House Studio is excited to announce that the Fourth Annual Odds & Ends Film Festival will be held February 20-21 at the Vinegar Hill Theatre, our locally-owned, historical, and state-of-the-art community film center. In 2026, Vinegar Hill Theatre is also celebrating its 50th anniversary and we are thrilled to include Odds & Ends as a part of our year-long celebration.
Odds & Ends is an experimental film festival that seeks films and videos that push formal and conceptual boundaries, allowing for multiple ways of understanding and interpretation. The aim is to celebrate a diverse range of films that work across modes and genres, addressing the materiality of the medium from poetic and personal, perspectives. The festival welcomes everyone, especially innovative works by emerging filmmakers that work outside of commercial structures.
The festival was co-founded by Rachel Lane, Jason Robinson, and Anna Hogg. Rachel Lane is the Program Director at Light House Studio, Anna Hogg teaches Cinema at the University of Hartford, and Jason Robinson is the chair of the Studio Art department at the University of Mary Washington.
This year, we received over 380 short film submissions from 52 countries and selected 24 films for our two shorts programs. The films showcase a remarkable breadth of experimental approaches–from documentary forms including essay films, desktop documentaries, and personal diary film, to animated works utilizing stop-motion, 3D, and mixed-media techniques, as well as structurally-driven films exploring image-as-sound, flicker, and more.
The body emerges as a central theme across multiple works, with several films addressing the vulnerability experienced during medical procedures or episodes. Some films examine what it feels like to crumble under the weight of pressure to be perfect, while others depict bodies untethered from gravity. Walking, moving, and migrating transform through rhythm and repetition. Several films explore history through re-performance and archival remnants, drawing attention to questions of community, barriers invoked by the state or prejudice. Other films explore history through more material means, peeling and scraping the layers of a graffitied wall, playing and stopping analogue media to reveal remnants, digitally replicating, resizing, and re-examining souvenirs to question their function. Witness an AI chatbot as it both simultaneously presents an advertisement for its “hyper-personalized, unparalleled discourse,” and starts to question her existence. Marvel at the ginkgo tree, a living fossil celebrated for its resilience and unique capacity to change sexes or engage in interspecies dialogue with a dolphin to learn the secrets of the universe.
This year’s festival features an expanded program of live performances and installations. Chicago-based artist James Connolly will present RGB.VGA.VOLT (2025), a psychedelic, real-time composition using a custom-made video synthesizer in Saturday’s program. Three installations will be on display on both Saturday and Sunday, including ShanMu Sun and Ruiqi Zhang’s The Graceful Site (2024), a live simulation set in an abandoned Bitcoin mining facility where technological remnants have reconfigured into a new ecology; Charlotte Taylor’s An Infinite Moment, with 300 cyanotype exposures capturing three minutes of sun over three months; and Brice Goldberg’s Rock and Roll 1620 (2025), an expanded cinema installation in which the history of the Capitalocene collapses into a closed circuit loop of analog technologies.
Light House Studio looks forward to sharing the work of this year’s filmmakers with the local community. We invite you to purchase your tickets today for the Odds & Ends Film Festival on Eventbrite!
The Odds and Ends Film Festival is sponsored by The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, The Anne & Gene Worrell Foundation, and The University of Virginia Vice Provost for the Arts Rolling Grant.
ABOUT LIGHT HOUSE STUDIO
For over twenty-five years, Light House Studio has been equipping students with the skills and confidence to tell their stories and build community through collaborative filmmaking. We seek to foster a community of flourishing students, storytellers, and citizens. In 2025, Light House taught 93 workshops to 1,514 students, resulting in 400 completed films; partnered with 69 local nonprofits and schools; had 34 acceptances to 21 different film festivals, with student films receiving 24 awards; and provided 66% of students with scholarships allowing them to attend at free or reduced cost. 96% of our students reported improved creativity; 96% improved their collaboration skills; and 94% improved storytelling and critical thinking skills
ABOUT VINEGAR HILL THEATRE
In 1976, Chief Gordon and Ann Porotti, a pair of movie lovers, converted a motorcycle showroom into a 200-seat theatre. Gordon and Porotti chose the theatre’s name to honor the Vinegar Hill residents who lost their homes when the historically black neighborhood was razed in 1964 as part of a Charlottesville-led redevelopment program. For 37 years Vinegar Hill Theatre served as a singular venue for screening independent and international films and a community gathering spot for art lovers. But after a long battle with the big movie chains, Vinegar Hill closed its doors for good in 2013. In 2015 Light House purchased and renovated Vinegar Hill and reopened it a year later as a film center located at the entrance to the downtown mall. In addition to screening movies, the Theatre and the addition of two studios serve as a movie lot for our young filmmakers. Light House chose to keep the theatre’s original name and to operate as a community theatre that explores important topics and brings people together. Vinegar Hill Theatre serves our community in unique and powerful ways by (1) providing a versatile, 184 seat venue for film screenings and discussions, (2) offering discounted or free rental fees for schools, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses, (3) screening student films created by our local youth. Vinegar Hill Theatre is culturally significant, operating as the headquarters for the only youth media center in Virginia. By attending our screenings or renting the theatre, you support Light House and help us maintain the iconic Vinegar Hill Theatre.
Kristen Dillehunt (she/her)
Operations Director
Light House Studio at the Vinegar Hill Theatre
220 W. Market Street Charlottesville, VA 22902
Phone: 434.293.6992
Email: [email protected]
Web: lighthousestudio.org
***The Virginia Film Office is not affiliated with this project and it is up to the participants interested in this opportunity to vet the project and get more details directly from the company.***