Add one more local film festival to your list of events to watch out for in the coming year. Yachad, a Jewish non-profit devoted to affordable housing development and maintenance in Washington, D.C., is starting up the new Our City Film Festival, a one-day event to be held at Busboys and Poets on Feb. 3, 2008. The festival’s focus will be to showcase films set in or about Washington, D.C., with particular attention paid to those about community service projects, communities, neighborhoods, city history, inhabitants, culture and customs. All length films of any kind, up to 90 minutes are being accepted, with no restrictions on premiere status.

Given that it’s only scheduled for one day (though program coordinator Kendra Rubinfeld tells us it could be extended to a second day, depending on the number and quality of submissions), it seems likely there will be a focus on screening many shorts instead of just a handful of features. This means those of you with a filmmaking background (or just an itch to scratch) have plenty of time between now and the final submission deadline of Dec. 3, 2007 (or Sept. 3 for the early deadline, which saves you $10 off the $35 submission fee) to conceive of and execute a short film about D.C. for the festival.

Rubinfeld said that Yachad, along with festival sponsors Women in Film and Video of Washington, D.C., the excellent Docs in Progress and local documentarian Aviva Kempner, are especially hoping to reach out to younger filmmakers, both 18-34 year-olds and with a separate category for youth-directed films by Washingtonians under 18. It’s a festival struggling to get off the ground, so there’s no telling what the quality of the programming will be like at this point, but we certainly like the idea of a D.C.-focused festival with room to showcase emerging talent. Interested filmmakers can download the submission form here or use the ubiquitous Withoutabox entry form.