Houston Cinema Arts Festival

About Houston Cinema Arts Festival

Houston Cinema Arts Festival is devoted to films by and about artists in the visual, performing, and literary arts. The Festival is a vibrant multimedia arts event that breaks out of the confines of the movie theater through live music and film performances, outdoor projections, and more.

Mission

Houston Cinema Arts Society is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting innovative films, media installations, and performances that celebrate the artistic process and enrich Houston’s culture and urban vitality.

Core Values

Appreciation of the creative process
Collaboration across arts disciplines, organizations, and communities
Cross-cultural understanding
Transformative cinematic experiences
Local economic development through the arts
Arts education that will inspire the next generation of artists and audiences

Auto Insurance Card Template: Supporting Our Festival Participants and Staff

The Houston Cinema Arts Festival celebrates the artistic process through film and is a complex logistical project that involves coordinating travel and local transportation for filmmakers, artists, and staff. To support the smooth operation of our festival, we are providing a downloadable auto insurance card template. This tool is designed to help those who drive during the festival keep their insurance information organized and easily accessible.

As the festival uses multiple venues across the city, providing resources that assist with transportation logistics aligns with our mission to facilitate a seamless cinematic experience. Check out all our posts:

By simplifying the practical aspects of festival participation, we allow artists and staff to focus more on their creative roles and less on administrative tasks.

The auto insurance card form is just one of the many ways we strive to support the diverse needs of our festival participants, ensuring that their experience in Houston is as enriching and hassle-free as possible. This tool is part of our commitment to providing comprehensive support for all aspects of our festival operations.

History

Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) has put the nation’s fourth-largest city on the map among film industry professionals, artists, and film fans as a premier showcase for the moving image and the creative process. Although the Society is still working on expanding 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 Neely to head a task force to stimulate film culture in Houston. She and a team of cultural leaders returned several months later with the recommendation that Houston sponsors 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, nationally and 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 Rice University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 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.

Houston Cinema Arts Festival is the most ambitious of the HCAS programs. This eight-day, multi-venue Festival includes over 50 narrative and documentary films, an interactive video installation gallery, 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, James Ivory, Julie Taymor, Will Forte, and Thomas Haden Church among many others, to the Festival.

The most recent initiative related to the Festival is CineSpace, a collaboration between NASA and the Houston Cinema Arts Society that allows filmmakers worldwide to share their works inspired by and using actual NASA imagery. CineSpace is a new short film competition premiering at Houston Cinema Arts Festival in November 2015. Short films featuring actual NASA footage collected from over 50 years of history will be judged on the creativity, innovation, and attention to detail that are the hallmarks of space exploration.

HCAS is proud to collaborate on its programs with several of Houston’s finest arts, cultural, and other nonprofit organizations. Partners have included The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Imprint, 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 the expansion of educational outreach with HOUSTON CINEMA ARTS FESTIVAL ON THE ROAD to make films about the arts to Houston area high schools and internship programs in Houston-area colleges and universities.

Submissions

Houston Cinema Arts Festival is a curated festival and does not conduct an open call for film submissions. The HCAS artistic director works with advisors from partner arts organizations on locating and soliciting films that fit the Festival’s focus on films by and about visual, performing, and literary artists. HCAS is particularly interested in films of high artistic quality that benefit from the theatrical presentation. Special consideration is given to films about the arts made by Texas filmmakers. If you have a new film made in the past two years that you think may be of interest, please email a description of your film and links to reviews or other background information, if available, to richard@cinemartsociety.org. If the film seems promising, then he will contact you and request a screener link. There is no entry fee.

One exception to the above is the CineSpace competition, an open call for short films that rework video images provided by our partner, NASA, from their archives of footage collected from 50 years of exploring the universe. The entry deadline is posted on the website, and there are substantial prizes of up to $10,000 with no entry fees!

AWARDS

CINESPACE 2016 WINNERS

Finalists And Winners (Click Link)

CineSpace Banner 600x291CineSpace offered filmmakers worldwide a chance to share their works inspired by and using actual NASA imagery. The international competition drew over 450 entries from 6 continents.

Academy Award-nominated director, producer, and screenwriter Richard Linklater – a Houston native who won best director honors at the 2015 Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards for his film Boyhood – helped NASA and the Houston Cinema Arts Society judge the contest entries.

From the entries, 16 finalists were chosen and premiered during CineSpace Day at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival. Prize money was awarded 1st Place $10,000, 2nd Place $5,000 for 2nd Place, and $3,000 3rd Place. Two additional categories were awarded $4,000 each for "Film Best Depicting Benefits to Humanity from the International Space Station" and "Film Best Depicting Spirit of Future Exploration of Space."

TREY SHULTS TO RECEIVE FIRST-EVER LEVANTINE CINEMA ARTS EMERGING ARTIST AWARD AT HCAF15

Trey Shultz

Trey Edward Shults Wrote, Directed, And Produced Krisha, Based On His Short Film Of The Same Name. Most Of The Cast Is Comprised Of The Members Of His Own Family In A Drama Filmed And Set In Houston, Texas, Over A Turbulent Thanksgiving Weekend. The Film Swept The Audience And Jury Prizes At SXSW In 2015.

Trey Was Born In 1988 In Houston, Texas. His First Foray Into The Film Industry Was Working In The Camera Department As A Film Loader On Terrance Malick's Upcoming Voyage Of Time And As An Intern On Malick's The Tree Of Life. Shults' Short Film, Krisha, Premiered At SXSW In 2014 In The Narrative Shorts Category, Where It Was Awarded Special Jury Recognition For Cinematography. The Short Went On To Play At Many Other Film Festivals, Including The HollyShorts Film Festival, Where It Won The Award For Best Narrative Short. In The Summer Of 2014, He Completed The Feature Version Of Krisha. It Is Shults' First Feature Film.

JAMES IVORY TO RECEIVE LEVANTINE CINEMA ARTS AWARD AT 2014 HOUSTON CINEMA ARTS FESTIVAL

The Houston Cinema Arts Festival (HCAF) annually celebrates artists in the visual, performing, and literary arts. It unveiled its 2014 programming and slate of guest artists today, including the bestowing of its annual Levantine Cinema Arts Award to director James Ivory.

Ivory, a three-time Academy Award nominee (A Room With a View, Howards End, The Remains of the Day), will present three films at HCAF 2014. He will receive the Levantine Award, presented by Levantine Films, before showing his most recent feature, City of Your Final Destination (2009), accompanied by novelist Peter Cameron. Ivory will also present and discuss one of his favorites, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990), based on the Evan S. Connell novel, and The Remains of the Day (1993), based on the Kazuo Ishiguro novel. He follows previous Levantine Award winners Isabella Rossellini (2010), Ethan Hawke (2011), Robert Redford (2012), and Richard Linklater (2013).

2013 Levantine Cinema Arts Award: Dazed And Confused With Richard Linklater

The award presentation was followed by a special 20th-anniversary screening of Dazed and Confused.

Richard Linklater, born in Houston and raised in nearby Huntsville, has supported the HCAF since its inception. He attended the festival in 2009 with Orson Welles and Me and brought his friend Ethan Hawke to join him in presenting Tape in 2011. He will receive the Levantine Award amidst a career renaissance with the 2013 release of one of his finest and most popular films, Before Midnight, following 2012's equally well-received Bernie.

Included in Quentin Tarantino's list of the ten greatest films of all time, Richard Linklater's cult classic has become part of the lexicon of film history and thus required viewing for aspiring filmmakers (and stoners). On its twentieth anniversary, Linklater told The Daily Beast what inspired his unique take on the teen movie genre: "I wanted to capture the feeling of driving around, trying to be cool. It was tone and atmosphere. That's what was churning around inside me. The mood."

Set on the last day of school at Lee High School in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, the film follows a group of students' activities as they celebrate summer's arrival. When classes end, the incoming freshman boys are hunted down and hazed by the senior boys, while the incoming freshman girls are rounded up and suffer the same fate at the hand of the senior girls. Randall "Pink" Floyd, the school's star football player, is asked to sign a pledge promising not to take drugs during the summer or do anything that would "jeopardize the goal of a championship season." Eventually, the students' various paths lead to an awesome keg party at the Moontower.

Film critic Roger Ebert praised the film as "art crossed with anthropology" with a "painful underside." In her review for The Austin Chronicle, Marjorie Baumgarten praised Matthew McConaughey's film debut stating, "He is a character we're all too familiar with in the movies, but McConaughey nails this guy without a hint of condescension or whimsy, claiming this character for all time as his own."

2012 Levantine Cinema Arts Award recipient

Robert Redford

Robert Redford, renowned actor, film director, environmentalist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival, will receive the 3rd Annual Levantine Cinema Arts Award at the 2012 Houston Cinema Arts Festival on November 9, 2012. Redfordʼs work in such classics as BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, THE STING, THE WAY WE WERE, and OUT OF AFRICA has been widely lauded and recognized. But it is his directing that has earned him his most significant acclaim. Redford won a Directors Guild of America Award, a Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Director for his directorial debut on the emotionally shattering family drama ORDINARY PEOPLE. He earned dual Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director in 1994 for helming QUIZ SHOW and two Golden Globe nominations (Best Picture and Best Director) for THE HORSE WHISPERER in 1998.

In 1981, Redford founded the Sundance Institute, a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater and supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The not-for-profit Sundance Institute is internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and artistic development programs, including the Screenwriting, Directing, Theatre, Music Composition, and Producing Labs.

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Robert Redford has come to personify the artist as both steward and generator of culture. Mr. Redford is a veritable cinematic icon and civic leader to whom Levantine Entertainment is honored to present its Levantine Cinema Arts Award.

2011 Levantine Cinema Arts Award recipient

Ethan Hawke

Ethan Hawke, born in Austin, Texas, in 1970, is best known for his film performances, from his star-making appearances in Dead Poets Society and Reality Bites through his Academy Award-nominated turn in Training Day, with Gattaca, Hamlet, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and many others along the way. However, His talents and accomplishments extend far beyond film acting, and this broad artistic resume has inspired Levantine Entertainment and the Houston Cinema Arts Society to award him the Levantine Cinema Arts Award.

On stage, he starred in Lincoln Center's Coast of Utopia, nominated for more Tony Awards than any play in history. He also starred in Jack O'Brien's Shakespeare's Henry IV production, which won the Tony for best revival. Off-Broadway, he had a smashing success in The New Group's revival of David Rabe's Hurlyburly. Recently, he has directed two plays for The New Group: Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want and Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind. He has been nominated for a Drama Desk Award as an actor and a director.

The Levantine Cinema Arts Award honors a leading actor, director, or other creative artist who has stretched the boundaries of cinematic expression throughout an illustrious film career. The presentation of the award will be accompanied by a gala screening of a new or classic work followed by an on-stage interview with the artist.

2010 Levantine Cinema Arts Award recipient

Isabella Rossellini

Isabella Rossellini made her film debut with a brief appearance as a nun opposite her mother in the 1976 film A Matter of Time. Her first role was in the 1979 film Il Prato. She did not become successful with acting until after her mother died in 1982 when she was cast in her first American film, White Nights (1985). She is probably best known for her pivotal role as the tortured nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, in which she also did her singing. Some other notable film roles include her work in Cousins, Death Becomes Her, Immortal Beloved, and Fearless.