SNAKE HOUSE OPEN CALL:
SINGLE CHANNEL 6TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL VIDEO FESTIVAL

Just one look, that's all it took*

Our 2026 open call, can you see me now?, centers “the gaze” with works that consider seeing from points poetic to political and their intersections.

In Walid Ra’ad’s Miraculous Beginnings part two, (one part of his three part video, Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs), the operator of a government surveillance camera (#18) assigned to monitor human activities on the seaside promenade in Beirut, turns his camera away from the designated targets every day towards the setting sun. A simple shift of view becomes a transgressive gesture and perhaps the only logical response to an illogical situation. Where will we look as the sun sets?

With the introduction in the 18th century of the panoramic picture to the West, a totalizing image of the natural and built world became a reality. Although “an all encompassing view” remains a physical impossibility for the human eye, the possibility of being all seeing and all knowing is at our fingertips with drones and a smartphone - surveillance as entertainment.

What are the destructive / captivating powers of looking? Ask Lot’s wife, Eurydice, Medusa, or James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
Is the power of looking and being looked at equal? Behold! It’s there in the word: to hold, to possess, to claim and control. Just one look. What are we taking?

“There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.”
- Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure. Translated from the French by Robert Hurley.

For guidelines and to submit entries please follow this link.
Deadline for submissions:
January 24, 2026, at 11:59 pm ET
$15 submission fee

*Just one look, and I fell so hard
In love with you, oh-oh, oh-oh
I found out how good it feels
To have, your love, oh-oh, oh-oh
Say you will, will be mine
Forever and always, oh-oh, oh-oh
Just one look and I knew
That you were my only one
Oh-oh-oh-ooh
I thought I was dreamin'
But I was wrong, yeah, yeah, yeah
Oh, but I'm gonna keep on schemin'
'Til I can make you, make you my own

So you see, I really care
Without you I'm nothin', oh-oh, oh-oh
Just one look and I know
I'll get you someday, , oh-oh, oh-oh

Just one look, that's all it took
Just one look, that's all it took
Just one look, that's all it took
Just one look, that's all it took

**Just One Look*, music and lyrics by Doris Troy and Gregory Carroll - recorded by Doris Troy in 1963

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