What? Summer blockbuster season is coming up and you are just fed up to here with Hollywood shlock? Settle down. Film Festival season has arrived in the T-dot.

No excuses, kids. There's essentially at least one film festival every weekend for the next few months for every imaginable interest, style, and cultural demographic.

Every flavour, every genre, and with loads of CanCon, so hows about we show some anglo-Canada filmmakers some love - Quebec knows how it's done.

So you can mark your calendar -

A brief, probably not all-inclusive list:

April 13-22 Images Film Fest - independent and experimental film and video.

April 19-23 Reel World - all styles, all Canadian

April 21-30 Sprokets - for the kiddies

April 28 - May 7 Hot Docs - better than reality tv. Theoretically.

May 6 - 14 Jewish Film Fest - just like it sounds.

May 10 - 14 Toronto International Deaf Film and Arts Festival - Think It's All Gone Pete Tong - their opening gala film

May 18 - 28 Inside Out - gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans film and video

June 8 - 10 NXNE - it's all about the music, man

June 13 - 18 WSFF - short stuff from just about everywhere (we covered it last year).

June 16 - 18 Splice This - fun with Super 8mm

June 15 - 18 Female Eye Film Fest - all genres/styles, all directed by women.

July 18 - 23 First Take International Student Film Festival - student films, not just for film profs anymore.

(take a break in August to catch up on all those blockbusters you missed out on).

Sept 6 Cabbagetown Short Film and Video Festival 15 minutes or less, one day only.

Sept 7 - 16 TIFF - you guys know this one

Oct 27 - 29 Fantasy Worldwide - archetypal, symbolic, whatever you want to call it

Nov 1 - 5 Planet in Focus - mean and green, and still accepting submissions.

Nov 15 - 19 Reel Asian - Asian and Asian-Canadian filmmakers

The One Minute Film Fest is accepting submissions for this year (theme - Growth)

As is Darryl's Hard Liquor and Porn Film Fest - which we reviewed last year.

South Asian Film Fest doesn't have dates set yet.

(There have also been film fests for Tibetan, Italian, Latin American, Armenian, etc, but I can't find links for this year yet).

So when the sun gets too hot, or you need to up your arty cred, check these out. You know we'll be covering as many as we can right here.

(image from Telecineservice.com)