News

In a city as big as Houston, experiencing its arts, crafts, culture and food is as easy as attending local events slated for nearly every weekend in the fall.

The International Quilt Festival will be Thursday, Oct. 30 through Sunday, Nov. 2, at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Professionals, hobbyists and amateurs will find something of interest at the 40th anniversary of this festival, which features fabric art displays, more than 1,000 vendor booths, and various quilting classes and lectures. Visit www.quilts.com.

October is the time for Bayou City Art Festival Downtown 2014, presented by the Art Colony Association. Scheduled for Oct. 11-12, the event features 300 artists, 19 disciplines, 16 nonprofits, music, food and Creative Zones. New this year is the Bayou City After Dark, 5-9:30 p.m. Saturday, featuring concerts and cocktails. Visit www.artcolonyassociation.org.

Save the date in November for the Houston Cinema Arts Festival The event will be held Nov. 12-16, presented by the Houston Cinema Arts Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to offering media installations, performances and innovative films.

Venues range from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to the Sundance Cinema, with additional spaces to be announced. This year’s spotlight screening will highlight Texas.

see full article at www.chron.com

In just six years, Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) has put the nation’s fourth largest city on the map among film industry professionals, artists, and film aficionados as a premier showcase for the moving image and the creative process. Although the society is still working to expand public awareness, its founding illustrates how Houston’s cultural entrepreneurship is taking off along with our diverse population and economy.

In 2007, then-Mayor Bill White asked arts philanthropist and former trial attorney Franci Crane to head a task force to stimulate film culture in Houston. She and a team of cultural leaders came back several months later with the recommendation that Houston sponsor cinematic programming that celebrates the visual, performing, and literary arts. This unique focus on films “by and about artists” accomplished two goals: It filled a niche in the broader film festival world that was sorely underrepresented. And it identified Houston, internationally, as a thriving arts town that celebrates innovative films, media installations and performances.

HCAS received 501(c)(3) status in September 2008 and presented a weekend Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Rice University. HCAS launched its inaugural five-day film festival in 2009. In addition to its now-annual Houston Cinema Arts Festival (HCAF), held in November, HCAS presents a variety of initiatives and programs including a growing schedule of year-round screenings, events, performances, and guest lectures.

The Houston Cinema Arts Festival is the most ambitious of the HCAS programs. This five-day, multi-venue festival includes over 50 narrative and documentary films, an interactive video installation gallery, 16mm screening room, live multimedia performances, panel discussions, Meet the Makers workshops, and free outdoor and student field trip screenings. In its relatively short history, HCAS has brought notable guest artists, such as Tilda Swinton, Alex Gibney, Guillermo Arriaga, Isabella Rossellini, John Turturro, Shirley MacLaine, Rick Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Fisher Stevens, Robert Redford, Tracy Letts, Will Forte, and Thomas Haden Church among many others, to the Festival.

HCAS is proud to collaborate on many of its programs with a number of Houston’s finest arts, cultural, and other nonprofit organizations. Partners have included The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Inprint, Blaffer Art Gallery, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, Houston PBS, Houston Ballet, HGOco-Houston Grand Opera, Aurora Picture Show, Southwest Alternate Media Project, Texas Children’s Hospital, and others. Current initiatives in progress include expansion of educational outreach with HOUSTON CINEMA ARTS FESTIVAL ON THE ROAD to take films about the arts to Houston area high schools and internship programs with the University of Houston Valenti School of Communications and Houston Community College Film Department.

Check out this interview of HCAS Executive Director Trish Rigdon telling you about Julydoscope 2014 on July 19 at Discovery Green http://ow.ly/z9cbz #Julydoscope #DiscoveryGreen

click to view video

The University of Houston Downtown is one of three Texas institutions to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to host The Big Read — a program that aims to revitalize the role of reading by exposing citizens to great literature and encouraging them to read for pleasure.

The grant is for $15,000 and UHD will provide an in-kind match. Part of the money will be used to provide students copies of “A Lesson Before Dying,” by Ernest J. Gaines. Gaines is a former Distinguished Visiting Professor at UHD.

Set in rural Louisiana in the late 1940s, “A Lesson Before Dying” is the story of a young black man named Jefferson who is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot-out in which three men are killed. Jefferson, the only survivor, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Students and community members will be encouraged to read the book and analyze its major themes: race, education, extended families, food, prison and crime.

Gaines’ book will be given to all incoming UHD freshmen, says Claire Caton, director of media relations at the school.

CLICK HERE to read more.

The University of Houston Downtown is one of three Texas institutions to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to host The Big Read — a program that aims to revitalize the role of reading by exposing citizens to great literature and encouraging them to read for pleasure.

The grant is for $15,000 and UHD will provide an in-kind match. Part of the money will be used to provide students copies of “A Lesson Before Dying,” by Ernest J. Gaines. Gaines is a former Distinguished Visiting Professor at UHD.

Set in rural Louisiana in the late 1940s, “A Lesson Before Dying” is the story of a young black man named Jefferson who is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot-out in which three men are killed. Jefferson, the only survivor, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Students and community members will be encouraged to read the book and analyze its major themes: race, education, extended families, food, prison and crime.

CLICK HERE to read full article.

On the heels of a successful 2013 festival that featured an array of notable actors, directors, producers, live performances and Academy Award-nominated films, the Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) announces today that its 2014 Houston Cinema Arts Festival (HCAF 2014) will take place from Nov. 12-16.

HCAS has received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to help support the HCAF, which is the only U.S. festival dedicated to films by and about the visual, performing and literary arts. HCAS was one of seven institutions in Houston and 22 in Texas to receive a 2014 grant from the NEA, an independent federal agency that funds and promotes artistic excellence, creativity and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities.

“We are so pleased with the success of the latest Houston Cinema Arts Festival and the outpouring of positive feedback from across the city,” HCAS Executive Director Trish Rigdon said. “With the generous support of the NEA and other partners, as well as our passionate volunteers and supporters, we fully expect 2014 to deliver our best festival yet and truly establish it as an integral part of Houston’s cultural fabric.”

HCAF 2013 presented 68 films, exhibitions and live performances during its five-day run, hosted primarily at Downtown and Museum District venues including Sundance Cinemas Houston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH).

The 2013 festival launched in spectacular fashion at the MFAH with the red-carpet Houston premiere of Oscar-nominated documentary Cutie and the Boxer, followed by a Q&A with Houston-born director Zachary Heinzerling and film subjects Ushio and Noriko Shinohara.

see full article at www.yourhoustonnews.com

1. Houston Cinema Arts Festival
Various locations

We can thank former Mayor Bill White and arts philanthropist and former trial attorney Franci Crane for the stellar Houston Cinema Arts Festival – the two were the initial forces behind what became the Houston Cinema Arts Society, which produces the annual festival. With a focus on films about the arts and artists, HCAF has brought in dozens of celebrities and cinema greats such as Isabella Rossellini, Tilda Swinton, Shirley MacLaine and Robert Redford. The 2014 festival, sure to be another blockbuster, is set for November 12 to 16.

see full article at Houston Press

I pressed a button and a painting performed for me.

Gregorio Vardanega’s painting Espaces Chromatiques Carrées en Spirale, part of the Constructed Dialogues: Concrete, Geometric, and Kinetic Art from the Latin American Art Collection, is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston until Jan. 6.

It doesn’t take much to mix the disciplines. Too many artists over blend, leaving a hodgepodge of layering that ends up feeling like a ball of gray Play-Doh. Even the word “multidisciplinary” makes me yawn. Been there, done that, enough already.

I prefer subtler concoctions, where an event crosses a fine line to become something else. My home is in the performing arts, so I tend to turn everything into a performance.

As a byproduct of my dance training, I come equipped with motion detector. As an experimental theater lover, I look for the smallest whiff of theatricality. And, as someone continually perplexed by performance art, I seek every opportunity to understand its history and lineage.

see full article at www.houston.culturemap.com

Actor/director to receive Cinema Arts Festival award

Houston Cinema Arts Festival has nabbed a big one.

Acclaimed actor/director Robert Redford will be honored at this year’s festival with the Levantine Cinema Arts Award for his creative work as a director of such movies as Ordinary People, Quiz Show and The Horse Whisperer and as founder of the Sundance Institute, the Utah-based non-profit organization that develops and nurtures independent film, festival organizers announced early Sunday morning. Redford, 76, will pick up the award on Nov. 9 and take part in a 90-minute discussion with Channel 8 host Ernie Manouse titled “A Conversation with Robert Redford.”

see full article at www.houston.culturemap.com

According to Variety, Cinema Arts Festival Houston is bringing the Oscar-winning director and enduringly popular actor
Robert Redford to H-Town.

see full article at Joe Leydon Blog