A Missing Frame
At CINTIMA, our daily work lives at the intersection of artistry, advocacy, and the on-set environment. We train intimacy coordinators, collaborate with filmmakers, and stand for a future where consent and care are not add-ons but part of the creative DNA. Over and over, we’ve seen the same thing: intimacy on screen mattered enormously, yet rarely got the same recognition as other kinds of storytelling.
Fight scenes are choreographed. Dance numbers are rehearsed. Car crashes get storyboards. But intimate scenes? Too often left to improvisation, or treated like they weren’t real storytelling at all.
That gap is what led us here.
FLICKER Festival is the festival we wanted to see exist: a space where intimacy itself is the subject, where its complexity is honored, where three minutes of human connection can stand alongside any sweeping epic.
Intimacy Is Everywhere
When we talk about intimacy, we don’t just mean sex. Intimacy is the pause before a kiss, the rupture between siblings, the private language of longtime friends. It’s grief in a hand squeeze. It’s vulnerability in silence.
Film has always been obsessed with intimacy, but the industry hasn’t always known how to handle it. Sometimes it’s censored. Sometimes it’s sensationalized. Sometimes it’s skipped altogether. The result is a flattened picture of something that, in reality, is as broad and varied as human experience itself.
At CINTIMA, we believe intimacy is everywhere. It’s not a genre. It’s not a gimmick. It’s part of the fabric of every story. FLICKER is about holding up those moments and saying: this matters.
A History We Can’t Ignore
Hollywood history is littered with examples of mishandled intimacy.
In the studio era, the Hays Code policed what could be shown: kisses timed, beds split in two, passion suggested but never seen. Later, as restrictions lifted, explicitness increased, but care for performers didn’t. Many “legendary” scenes were created through coercion or lack of consent, leaving behind trauma.
Meanwhile, intimacy that didn’t fit heteronormative, white, cisgender frameworks was pushed to the margins. Queer stories coded in shadows. Stories of Black, Brown, and disabled love left untold or stereotyped.
And yet, alongside this harm, there were breakthroughs: films and filmmakers who showed intimacy as expansive, political, tender, dangerous, funny, real. Those glimpses remind us what’s possible when intimacy is treated with artistry and intention.
FLICKER builds on that lineage, learning from the failures, amplifying the breakthroughs, and creating a new container where care is the baseline, not the exception.
Why Three Minutes
We called it FLICKER for a reason. In film, a flicker is the unit of time that creates the illusion of motion. Intimacy is like that, too: brief moments that carry disproportionate weight.
Three minutes is a challenge. Long enough to establish a world, short enough to strip away filler. In three minutes you can devastate, seduce, alienate, reconcile. You can reframe how intimacy looks, who it belongs to, what it means.
Three minutes is also egalitarian. You don’t need a massive budget to tell a powerful three-minute story. It opens the door for emerging voices, for experiments, for excerpts from longer works that deserve their own spotlight.
At FLICKER, every film, whether narrative, documentary, animation, or experimental, stands shoulder to shoulder in this compressed frame.
Why Now
The role of intimacy coordinators has gone from “new idea” to industry standard in just a few years. SAG-AFTRA, studios, and networks are recognizing that intimacy requires the same care as stunts. That’s progress.
But cultural change doesn’t just happen in contracts or training rooms. It also happens in festivals, in public conversations, in the stories that reach audiences.
We started FLICKER because we knew the momentum around intimacy on set needed to be matched by momentum around intimacy on screen. We needed a platform that said: these stories matter, these images matter, these choices matter.
And we needed it now. In a climate where bodily autonomy, queer representation, and nuanced depictions of desire are all under scrutiny, FLICKER insists that intimacy is not peripheral. It’s central.
Why CINTIMA
CINTIMA is a collective of intimacy coordinators, filmmakers, and educators. We’ve been in the rooms where actors had no advocate. We’ve also been in the rooms where thoughtful structures turned vulnerability into artistry.
We train ICs in everything from choreography to anti-harassment to trauma awareness. We emphasize that intimacy is political, cultural, and embodied. We remind the industry that care is not a liability—it’s a creative engine.
Who better to start a festival about intimacy than the people whose work is making it safer, sharper, and more intentional every day?
FLICKER is the natural extension of our mission. If the training is about equipping artists to work with care, the festival is about showing the world why that care matters.
The Jury
Every festival is shaped by its jury. We wanted a group that reflects the diversity of perspectives shaping intimacy today.
Our jury includes actors who’ve carried intimate scenes without support, intimacy coordinators who’ve pioneered the field, and filmmakers pushing the boundaries of how intimacy looks on screen.
Danielle Deadwyler, Actress (The Piano Lesson, Station Eleven)
Rutina Wesley, Actress (The Last of Us, Queen Sugar)
Miranda Bailey, Producer / Director (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Swiss Army Man)
Amanda Kramer, Filmmaker (Please Baby Please, Ladyworld)
Seth Caplan, Producer (First Girl I Loved, In Search of a Midnight Kiss)
Clark Moore, Actor (Love, Simon, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)
Alicia Rodis, Intimacy Coordinator (The Deuce, In-house IC for HBO/Max)
Almog Avidan, Filmmaker (Trust, Teddy Bears Are For Lovers)
Chris Chalk, Actor / Filmmaker (It: Welcome to Derry, Our Deadly Vows)
Jiarui Guo, Producer (The Brutalist)
Roxy Sorkin, Filmmaker (Swollen, Vodka)
Leila Djansi, Filmmaker (Like Cotton Twines, Sinking Sands)
They know firsthand the stakes of representation. Their job isn’t just to pick winners. It’s to help curate a conversation about where intimacy has been, and where it can go.
Awards With Intention
We could have copied the usual festival awards, but that wouldn’t reflect our values.
So yes, we’ll honor Best Short Film and Best Actor. But we’ll also recognize Best Intimacy, the films that show care and connection with depth. We’ll have space for innovation with Best Digital/AI.
It’s not just about trophies. It’s about naming what matters.
October 16, 2025
On October 16, the Culver Theater in Culver City will host the first-ever FLICKER Festival.
The night will include a curated program of three-minute films and excerpts, a panel discussion with our jury, and a set of awards that reflect our values. We’ll also screen legacy work like John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, films that pushed boundaries and continue to spark dialogue.
It will be a night of cinema, yes. But also a night of conversation. A night of community. A night where intimacy is given the space it deserves.
Looking Ahead
We didn’t build FLICKER as a one-off. We built it as the beginning of something.
Our vision is that FLICKER becomes an annual gathering place for filmmakers and audiences around the world. That it becomes a platform for emerging voices, for global conversations, for new aesthetics of intimacy.
We want to see FLICKER expand to workshops, touring programs, and international collaborations. We want to see filmmakers take risks, audiences demand more, and intimacy coordinators continue to bridge art and care.
We started this festival because we believe intimacy is not a side note in cinema. It’s the story itself.
Closing
We named it FLICKER because that’s what intimacy is: small moments of light and shadow that shift everything.
We believe even three minutes can hold a universe of storytelling.
And we believe the future of storytelling depends on treating intimacy not as accident, not as spectacle, but as art.
On October 16, 2025, we’ll gather to prove it. We hope you’ll join us.
