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Here are four recent festival signal films that showcase the possibilities of this unique format.

The festival's theme, "Rock, Paper, Scissors," focuses on materiality, D.I.Y. culture, and the beauty of imperfection.

Three new calls for entries from Pejë, Kosovo; Brooklyn, New York; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The KLIK! Animation Festival concluded its six-day event last Sunday in Amsterdam, awarding its top prize to Piotr Dumala's festival favorite "Hipopotamy."

The new edition of the KLIK Animation Festival begins in Amsterdam tomorrow and continues through Sunday, November 9th.

West Coast residents are in luck: if you can't make it to an international film festival, the festival is coming to you.

The KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival has announced the theme for their 2013 edition: The Fabulous Fifties, a major celebration of mid-century animation that will include programs such as The Nuclear Family, Cartoon Modern: The Essentials, and Contemporary Cartoon Modern. The festival will take place between November 12-17, 2013 at the futuristic-looking EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam.

KLIK! is a young event—this is their sixth year—and they’re quirky, fun and unafraid to push things further than the average animation festival. I’ve had the pleasure of consulting with them on the Cartoon Modern theme this year, and they’re putting together some awesome shows and events that reveal fresh insights on the ‘cartoon modern’ movement.

More from their official announcement:

Every year KLIK! dedicates part of the festival program to an exciting theme. This year it’s The Fabulous Fifties, taking you back to perfectly happy families, the magic of home automation and cheesy toothpaste commercials. But the fifties weren’t just that – at the same time animation encountered a groundbreaking change. Animation in that era was greatly influenced by modern design, with its use of graphic, almost abstract, forms and primary colors, earning its term ‘Cartoon Modern’. This turning point in animation history gave us beloved works like The Jetsons, The Pink Panther, 101 Dalmatians and those wonderfully cheesy TV commercials, and went on to influence contemporary animation such as The Powerpuff Girls, Ren & Stimpy, Samurai Jack and even the titles of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.

Besides the Fabulous Fifties theme, KLIK! will also have a full slate of festival programming including short competitions, animated features, and panels and demos, and a special afternoon for kids.

Here are the call for entries from three quality festivals: KLIK! Animation Festival in Amsterdam, Animateka Int’l Animated Film Festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival.

The KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival will take place in November 2013. In addition to awards for professionals, students, 3D stereoscopic and commissioned animation, they also hand out the Amsterdam Audience Award, the Young Amsterdam Audience and Political Animation Award.

Submission is FREE. Films should be 25 minutes and under and produced after January 2012. Deadline is July 1st. For full details, go to KLIK’s submission page.

The 10th edition of Animateka International Animated Film Festival will take place from December 2 to 8 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. For its main competition, the festival accepts films from Central and Eastern European countries, but its children and student competitions are open to other countries. Here’s the breakdown:

There will be an international competition open to films realized for the cinema with any animation technique, frame by frame or computer graphic. Short animated films (the duration of which must not exceed 35 minutes of the total running time) produced or co-produced in the following countries are eligible to apply for the Central and Eastern European Competition Short Animated Film Programme: Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine.

Children’s films from all countries worldwide are eligible for competition in the children’s programme Elephant. European student films (produced within a public or private educational institution of an EU member country) are eligible for the European Student Competition Programme.

Submission is FREE. Deadline is September 15. For complete rules and application forms, visit Animeteka’s website.

The New York Intl Children’s Film Festival, which bills itself as North America’s largest film festival for children and teens, is now accepting submissions for next year’s edition that will run March 7-30, 2014. The festival is looking for “creative, original, non-formulaic works that will help to define a new, more compelling film for kids,” and they further state that, “we are not shy about showing films with mature themes, subject matter, language or sensibilities, especially for our teen and pre-teen audiences.” The festival is closely affiliated with film distributor GKIDS, which has been the U.S. distributor of features like The Secret of Kells, From Up on Poppy Hill and the forthcoming Ernest and Celestine.

Submission fees range from $25-75. The early deadline for shorts is September 15 and October 15 for regular. The early deadline for feature length films is October 15 and November 15 for regular. To enter, visit the festival’s submission page.