Video Association of Dallas

The Video Association of Dallas (VAD) is a 501(c)(3) organization incorporated on April 25, 1989. It began in 1986 a weekend event, Video As A Creative Medium, presented at the Dallas Museum of Art by independent curators Barton Weiss and John Held. That first event, which included two nights of video by selected local and national video artists, was a great popular success, which led to the founding of the Dallas Video Festival (DVF) in 1987.

The Dallas Video Festival is now the oldest and largest video festival in the United States, and continues to garner critical and popular acclaim. Since 1986, the Dallas Video Festival has specialized in independent, alternative, and non-commercial media, presenting hard-to-find works rarely seen on television, in movie theaters, or elsewhere, despite their artistic excellence and cultural and social relevance. Even in a Web 2.0 environment where everything is seemingly available on the internet, the Dallas Video Festival provides curatorial guidance, a critical voice in the wilderness navigating the vast and diverse landscape of media, helping to interpret its cultural and artistic significance. The event still provides a communal environment for real-time, face-to-face dialogue between makers and audiences.