Documentary Shorts Are Dominating the 2025 Oak Cliff Film Festival

Each year, a certain type of film takes a stronghold on the Oak Cliff Film Festival (OCFF) lineup. That type can vary from year to year sometimes — a trend can be films that transcend genre, categories rooted by exhibition, or even something as general as “films with musical elements."

The standout in 2025 is the festival’s slate of documentary short films.

In fact, OCFF’s documentary shorts slate is so strong this year that an extra programming block was added to the schedule to incorporate as many of these movies in the lineup as possible. The first block will play June 28, at the Oak Cliff Assembly, beginning at 4:45 p.m., while the second block will screen on June 29 at 1:00 p.m. at the Kessler Theater.

This year, several of the films being shown under the documentary shorts programming umbrella were directed by locals excited to leverage the form to educate and entertain audiences.

Bart Weiss, founder of VideoFest and a former film educator, has a wealth of experience in documentary and short-form filmmaking. He's bringing Rolling Film, Rocking History, Al Maysles Captures the Beatles to OCFF, which, as the title implies, chronicles esteemed American documentarian Albert Maysles and his work with The Beatles.

Working on a short about Maysles was a natural project for Weiss to slot into, as he had been so inspired by the filmmaker that he named an annual VideoFest award after him. The film came to fruition after Andy Streitfeld from AMS Pictures reached out to Weiss to tell him that he had shot footage of Maysles speaking about working with The Beatles — he encouraged Weiss to use the raw footage and turn it into a film.

The process of using that footage —  and incorporating other footage — into a proper short film involved lengthy review of content to figure out what best made a 10-11 minute short film. It meant losing moments focused on Yoko Ono (who is notoriously litigious, which meant including that footage was risky anyways) and honing in on the idea of this short being a window into the world of cinéma vérité in the way it was shot in the ‘60s. Back then, crews shot with relatively cumbersome equipment that required filmmakers to decide precisely when and where they would spend film capturing footage.

The shorts being screened this year are broadly about historical figures and events, but that does not mean they do not have a localized hook to them. Sai Selvarajan’s MFFL tackles the incendiary fallout from the Dallas Mavericks’ trade of Luka Dončić earlier this year.

“Being a die-hard Mavericks fan…I think we were all in shock,” says Selvarajan. “I just wanted to capture this moment and just put it in a box.”

MFFL details the fan response to the infamous trade, including the protest that took place over the weekend immediately following the announcement and utilizing Mavs fan Debra Welch as the film’s through-line.

Elsewhere, some shorts follow a more exploratory path, taking audiences into new communities by broadening horizons and understanding. That is certainly true in Meet the Noisemakers by UNT student McKinley Argyle, which dives into the ‘noise’ genre of music in Denton, Texas.

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” says Argyle. “Because explaining what ‘noise’ is, is almost counterintuitive to what it is, which is kind of funny. But it’s an experimental art. Some noise artists think of it as the antithesis to music, and some think that it’s a genre of music.”

As much as Argyle's documentary is about noise in the context of performance art, it is also about the community that has grown around the subject.

“I just thought it was an interesting contrast, because you have this really cool, experimental, kind of crazy art form, but all of the people in this community are, like, the biggest sweethearts you’ll ever meet,” explains the filmmaker.

She emphasizes that tapping into the emotional component of the performances was a driving force for making the film, as it was evident in not only the art form itself, but the community that supports it, too.

A sense of community is a theme that comes up often when speaking with short-form documentary filmmakers — a driving force that ties many of these projects together, as disparate as their subject matter may appear on the surface.

Judah Agbonkhina has created his own community-focused short with Behind the Strings: Amplifying Black Feminism in Guitar Culture.

Agbonkhina worked with Dallas musician Jess Garland (who serves as executive producer on the film) and her organization, Swan Strings, which is dedicated to empowering underserved communities by providing them with access to guitars and string culture. Garland says that showing how music can be made is a "powerful tool for healing, community empowerment and social change."

 Agbonkhina is also associated with the Pegasus Media Project, which was his gateway to making this film a reality.

“Documentary work, short doc work, all doc work, is just starting to get the weight that it deserves in the film community, as far as people understanding that it’s a viable form of entertainment and education,” says Agbonkhina.

He describes documentaries as the “new wave” in filmmaking due to growing audiences who grew up on reality TV, and find themselves drawn to stories that delve into people’s lives and the world around them.

The additional programming block at OCFF for documentary shorts certainly lends credence to that theory, too.

For his part, Weiss offers his tongue-in-cheek summarization for the growing demand.

“The great thing about a documentary short is somebody didn’t take a 10-minute idea and turn it into a 90-minute experience.”

You can see full OCFF documentary shorts lineup here.