A new series of film screenings take flight in Big Sur this summer.

The Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series is taking a hiatus this summer and its host, Henry Miller Library, has opened up the space for others to fill. The first is the Flying Robot International Film Festival, which is all about drones.

Drones have grown into a subculture that harbors quirky stuff like underwater submarine drone videos, YouTube fails set to songs like Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” and “dronies,” selfie videos shot by drones swooping away.

And then there’s drone racing.

Racers call it “FPV” for first person view racing, and it’s essentially the sport of flying fast, small quadcopters using video goggles to receive video from the perspective of the drone in real-time.

Eddie Codel, who founded Flying Robot, claims that focus on the gear doesn’t have to sap attention from human stories.

“There are drones being used for humanitarian purposes, such as the Syria Airlift Project which aims to deliver medical aid to civilians caught in war zones,” Codel writes by email. And that is covered in one of the festival’s short films.

But another film shows us a filmmaker who made a “tribute” to his departed cat by taxidermying its body over the frame of a drone. Voila. Flying dead cat. That seems less inspired than insipid.

While military drones are increasingly used as war machines, Codel and his film festival, which received funding from drone manufacturers in its launch last year, is trying to cast them in a positive light: as democratizers of airspace, as inexpensive tools to expand our creative capabilities, as vehicles to see the beauty of our environment from the sky.

FLYING ROBOT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs 8-9pm at Henry Miller Library, 48603 Highway 1, Big Sur. $10-$20 donation (RSVP). 667-2574, www.friff.co