The world's greatest short film-and-pancakes extravaganza takes place this weekend, when the 10th annual Hi Mom! Film Festival gets under way Friday and Saturday in Carrboro and Chapel Hill.

This year's festival will include 51 short films -- almost all of them less than seven minutes long -- organized into four loosely thematic "blocks." One block will feature family-friendly fare. Another includes works the organizers call "rude and raunchy."

The first set -- the family-friendly one -- will show Friday starting at 8 p.m. on top of the Wallace parking deck on Rosemary Street.

The other three will be presented at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro Friday and Saturday.

As always, The Hi Mom! festival will feature films spanning all manner of genres, subjects, styles and treatments -- live action drama, comedy, documentary, animation, weird avant-garde stuff, you name it.

You're not going to see any of these playing at the multiplex. Hi Mom! focuses on films made for the love of making films or the drive to tell a story or express an idea, not those made in hopes of turning a profit at the box office.

Among the works you can catch this year: "Andy the Giraffe Calls for Tech Support," "My Mum the Wrestler," Banana Bus," Finding Emo" and the intriguing "Musical Composition for the Sneeze."

Anyone who has been to a Hi Mom! knows, nothing goes better with short films than pancakes. Free flapjacks will be served at all screenings, continuing a tradition that began with the very first Hi Mom! festival 10 years ago, when a group of UNC film students inaugurated the event, primarily for their own amusement.

Hi Mom! has since become a big deal; the organizers select each year's festival films from among hundreds of submissions from all over the world. This year's festival features films from Canada, France, Russia and the United Kingdom, as well as from throughout the U.S., including Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

For information and tickets, see www.himomfilmfest.org.