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11.16.09
Tying the Arts Together: The Cinema Arts Festival Houston
By Patricia Zimmermann
Houston is one of those places that sprawls bigger than the Texas plains in the national imaginary: big oil, big energy, big medicine, NASA, high technology, and a lot of plastic surgery.
But Houston, the fourth largest and perhaps fastest growing city in the United States, is also something more: a percolating arts community, with a world class opera, ballet and symphony, major museums, and an alternative arts scene. Everywhere you look, some arts event, festival or performance unfurls somewhere in the city, with a can-do Texas style that yanks away Yankee stereotypes about oil rigs, barbeque, and superhighways.
Almost unimaginable to launch a new major film festival in the middle of the worst recession in history, it seems to make perfect sense in sunny Houston. Curated by Richard Herskowitz, formerly director of the Virginia Film Festival, The Cinema Arts Festival Houston unspooled with over 40 films and events. It conjured the interweavings and cross-fertilizations between the arts and cinema.
“It's the only U.S. film festival devoted to films by and about artists of all stripes. The closest equivalent is the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal. Ours is also conceived as a multimedia arts event surrounding its films with live performances, installations, and outdoor projections,” says Herskowitz.
A city-wide celebration at eight venues (including the historic Alabama Theater, Rice University, the outdoor Discovery Green and the Museum of Fine Arts) the Cinema Arts Festival Houston mischievously torqued preconceptions about films about the arts, a genre typically associated with flat, preachy films explaining paintings in monotone you watch on hard benches at museums. The rigorous, surprising programming jolted audiences to consider the migrations, flirtations ,and infiltrations between novels, painting, sculpture, music, performance, acting, photography, drawing, architecture, dance, writing, digitality.
About Houston Cinema Arts Society and Cinema Arts Festival Houston
Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) is a non-profit organization created in 2008 under the direction of a dedicated task force with the support of Houston Mayor Bill White and the leadership of Franci Crane to organize and host Cinema Arts Festival Houston, a ground-breaking and innovative film and multimedia arts festival featuring art by and about artists and celebrating the vitality and diversity of the arts in Houston and enriching the city’s film and arts community. HCAS is funded in part by grants from the Crane Foundation, City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance and the City of Houston Convention and Entertainment Facilities Department. Cinema Arts Festival Houston debuts in Houston November 11 – 15, 2009. Festival headquarters are located at the historic Alabama Theatre, 2922 South Shepherd, Houston, TX 77098. Online tickets sales began October 14 at www.cinemartsociety.org. In person tickets sales begin at Festival headquarters on October 21.
