Marian Luntz at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

When they asked me to choose a film for my tribute at Cinema Arts Festival Houston, I thought that, in a festival of films on art, I wanted my choice to celebrate the art of cinema. The film about film par excellence is Fellini’s 8 1/2. It represents the kind of art cinema that shaped me and made me want, more than anything, to turn audiences on to adventurous cinema.
- Marian Luntz

The mission of Cinema Arts Festival Houston is to celebrate and direct the world’s attention to the vitality of Houston’s vibrant arts scene. Among those most responsible for the vitality in Houston’s film culture is Marian Luntz, who has been the Film Program Director and Curator of Film and Video at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston since 1990. The film exhibition program at the MFAH provides Houston’s cinephiles with a sumptuous array of classic and contemporary films, domestic and foreign, including premieres of significant independent productions and appearances by major artists, scholars and critics. Audiences find Marian’s programming illuminating, often presented in series with overall themes that focus on a certain country or region, a specific actor or director, or a particular topic providing quality viewing experiences for Houston’s diverse cultural interests. Marian also has production experience, having served on the producing team of the Texas PBS shorts showcase, The Territory, since 1984. She serves on the board of directors of the Southwest Alternate Media Project and the Houston Cinema Arts Society, and on the advisory boards of Aurora Picture Show and the Texan-French Alliance for the Arts. Marian has lectured at many institutions and conferences, and has special expertise in the film and video of legendary photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, having coordinated the preservation and distribution of his work throughout her tenure at the MFAH. She received a Dedicated Service Award from the School of Communications at Texas Southern University in April 2008, and received an award for “Excellence in Film Programming” from the Houston Film Critics Society in 2008. The Houston Chronicle recently invited Marian to become one of their City Brights bloggers. Her SmARTFilm blog appears regularly on the newspaper’s Web site with the latest in film news and comments.

8 1/2 and Tribute to Marian Luntz

Sunday, November 14, 4:00PM
Museum of Fine Ar ts, Houston, Brown Auditorium

20th Anniversary: Robert Ziebell and This State I’m In

In 1990, This State I’m In was completed after over four years of work by artist Robert Ziebell. The initial grant funding for the project was to create a trailer for a film that would never be made. The ensuing outstanding performances by a multitude of characters from the Houston art scene encouraged Ziebell to expand his initial concept into a feature film, and This State I’m In was born. In addition to its Wizard of Oz-inspired narrative trajectory, the film documented Ziebell’s first impressions and actual experiences in Texas since relocating to Houston for the Museum of Fine Arts’ newly established Core Artist-in-Residence Program. This State I’m In may now be seen as a time-capsule preserving a vibrant moment in the nascent Houston art scene. It also foreshadows the future of Houston and surrounding areas, from events such as the Enron scandal to Hurricane Ike and the fate of the Bolivar Peninsula.

Robert Ziebell is a lens-based artist who earned a B.F.A. from the University of Michigan School of Art in 1979 and then participated in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Program in 1983-86. Ziebell has had numerous exhibitions of his photography in one person and group shows, including the Contemporary Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Blaffer Gallery, the Phoenix Art Museum and more. His film work has been featured in various festivals and on tour in both the United States and Canada in addition to being aired on Houston’s PBS affiliate KUHT. Ziebell recently completed a project that utilizes both photography and video in documenting a surrealist garden in Mexico. “Las Pozas: Steps & Falls” debuted at Texas Gallery in Houston and the Austin Museum of Art during the SXSW festival in March of 2007.

Setting the Scene:
Low Budget Feature Production from “This State I’m In” to
“Memories of Overdevelopment”

Sunday, November 14 1:00PM
Edwards #4

This State I’m In
20th anniversary screening and discussion

Sunday, November 14 | 7:00PM
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Brown Auditorium

40th Anniversary: Rice Media Center

The Rice University Media Center, an integral part of the arts at Rice University, was founded by international art patrons Jean and Dominique de Menil, with scholar Gerald O’Grady as a consultant. The founders’ intent was that the Rice Media Center provide a channel through which different peoples of the world could communicate and the potential of film as a democratic, educational medium could be developed. The legendary vision of the de Menil family was fulfilled by the creation of the Rice Media Center building (which opened in 1970), the Department of Art and Art History and Institute for the Arts which today exist as the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, Department of Art History and the Rice Cinema Program.

The de Menil’s vision for the center was to use the media of film and photography and art as an educational tool in both research and teaching, and to unite different branches of education. Among those who engaged the Rice community were Colin Young, then Dean of Arts at UCLA, legendary Italian filmmaker and director Roberto Rossellini, along with Frantizek Daniel, renowned director of the Prague Film School, who visited the Media Center to engage and introduce students, faculty and community to this new wave of filmmaking. In 1970-71 David MacDougall, who had studied under Colin Young, came to Rice as an ethnographic filmmaker from UCLA. Additionally, the de Menils also brought a young documentary filmmaker to Houston to co-direct the center, Academy Award nominee James Blue. Blue, MacDougall, and, after 1975, filmmaker Brian Huberman, produced observational and ethnographic documentaries at the Center and encouraged students of all disciplines to see themselves as filmmakers. They brought a regular flow of visiting directors to campus.

For 40 years, the Rice Cinema has continued to bring visiting filmmakers and screen films from around the world — features, shorts, documentaries and animation. Rice Cinema reaches beyond the university’s hedges to the diverse communities of Houston, offering a living alternative to the monolithic commercial cinema of Hollywood. Among the internationally known filmmakers who have appeared on the campus over the years are Werner Herzog, Rakhshan Banietemad, Atom Egoyan, Shirin Neshat, Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, George Lucas, Fernando E. Solanas, Albert Maysles and Dennis Hopper.

In 1987, Isabella Rossellini participated in a retrospective of her father’s work, and she returns to Houston to celebrate the Media Center’s 40th anniversary and introduce her father’s Journey to Italy in the Rice Cinema. On Friday, in collaboration with Rice Cinema, the festival will present a classic of Latin American cinema (which has a continuous, significant presence in Rice Cinema programming), Memories of Underdevelopment, and follow it with a contemporary update titled Memories of Overdevelopment, by a young Cuban-American filmmaker. Finally, on Saturday night, the son and grandson of the de Menils, Francois and John, will present their collaborative film about Dominique de Menil’s work with Max Ernst on an art exhibition in the Rice Art Institute, once located next door to the Media Center.

Co-sponsored with the Menil Collection and Rice Cinema.