This year’s Dallas Video Festival, the 22nd edition kicks off tonight, November 5, has a new name: “VideoFest.” It dropped the “Dallas” for two reasons, says Artistic Director Bart Weiss. The festival is one of a kind in the country, and there didn’t seem to be a need to distinguish it as a Dallas-based video festival. The scope of the fest also far outreaches the local scene. The widely-traveled Weiss has been discovering and bringing back films from around the world for years, and he felt that the name of the festival shouldn’t mislead audiences in thinking this is a purely local media festival.

But the “Dallas” portion of the name wasn’t the only piece on the chopping block. For a number of years, Weiss said festival organizers have been wondering if “video” is the right word anymore for what they show at the VideoFest.

When Weiss founded the festival in the late-1980s, video was a very definable genre. Films were made on celluloid, and works in video represented a distinguishable underground – from avant-garde art pieces to guerilla documentaries and low-budget narratives. The medium of video, characterized by its explosive blues, geometric editing, and surreal effects – think Max Headroom– was reserved to the worlds of television, music, and visual art. But over the past two decades the technology has evolved to where digital media is the norm in Hollywood features. As the line between film and video blurred, VideoFest’s niche became less defined.

In a way, though, the shifting focus away from video-as-video has helped bring to light just what role VideoFest plays within the context of the hundreds of film festivals held each year throughout the United States. Though it is difficult to lump the works into one category, VideoFest features films that don’t easily fit in the market for 90 minute narratives, that play with medium and genre, that meditate on the role and power of images, and that push technology to find new forms of visual expression.

There are too many good films to see at this year’s fest, which is why VideoFest only sells passes, forgoing potentially higher ticket revenue to force attendees to indulge in the total festival experience, popping into multiple films and stumbling in on something unexpected and life-changing. So let-loose and see something you know nothing about. But as a guide, here are some must sees to add to your fest card:

All films are playing at the Angelika Film Center. For a full schedule, click here.

Supposed cures for an invented condition race for FDA approval in Orgasm Inc.

Orgasm, Inc. – It is easy to get lost in the details and rhetoric of the health care debate, but if you need a reminder of just how messed up the market-driven U.S. medical industry is, check out Orgasm, Inc., a documentary by Liz Canner (Thursday, November 05 at 9 p.m.). Canner was hired to edit pornographic movies by the drug company Vivus for a study on the effectiveness of a female form of Viagra. The odd-job exposed Canner to the race to find a treatment for Female Sexual Disorder, a supposed disease that was all-but invented by drug companies who saw a huge market for peddling a Viagra-like drug to women. The film goes beyond the sickening role pharmaceutical companies play in shaping public perception about disease, and challenges our contemporary notions of sexuality and sexual normalcy. It’s surprising that a film that finds its origin in the porno editing could end up such a powerful advocate for a more traditional approach to sexuality.

The Video Café – In addition to films on the big screens, VideoFest will be turning the Angelika Café into a casual video gallery featuring shorts and odd, off-the-wall movies. Fans of Sufjan Stevens will want to catch the pop star / composer’s latest effort The BQE (Friday, November 6, 7 p.m.). Stevens’ film is a musical/visual homage to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and somehow the always quirky Stevens finds whimsy in the hellish traffic mess. To complete the Brooklyn experience, check out the short Open House in the video café on Sunday, November 8, at 2:15 p.m. The film matches images of demolition and luxury condo development in the Williamsburg neighborhood with voiceovers of the marketing mumbo jumbo that is fanning the market that is destroying old Brooklyn. It is a haunting preservationist horror film.

Burma VJ – The idea that revolutions come in twenty year cycles couldn’t be truer in Burma. Under the tight grip of a ruthless authoritarian regime for decades, a rebellion in 1988 was suppressed and a tense, brutal peace was enforced on the country until 2007, when monks helped ignite a second wave of popular uprising. Bruma VJ (Sunday, November 8 at 4:45 p.m.) is the story of the DVB, an underground news organization that covertly filmed and broadcasted images of the rebellion to the world. It is the perfect VideoFest film, at the same time powerful social commentary of an under reported story and a meditation on the power of video and images, made accessible through advances in camcorder and satellite technology.

The queen of Nigeria’s film industry, Peace Anyiam-Fibresima, in Nollywood Lady

Nollywood Lady – You’ve heard of India’s Bollywood, but Nigeria’s burgeoning film industry is becoming the dominant cultural voice on the African continent. Characterized by extreme low budget productions, and stories that mix soap operas and violent street crime, Nollywood is fighting for international respect as it tries to take up the reigns of telling truly African stories. Nollywood Lady (Sunday, November 8, at 3:45 p.m.) follows Nigerian film star Peace Anyiam-Fibresima as she offers a introduction to her country’s cinema, an industry that owes its existence to the ever-increasing accessibility of the medium of moving images through digital technology, even in the poorest, most war-torn corners of the world.