What would it take to raise a real sense of sorrow over the loss of someone who died nearly a half-century ago, even someone as iconic as Janis Joplin?
Time heals all wounds, the wisdom goes, but there’s a fresh melancholy that comes from watching Janis: Little Girl Blue. The film kicked off this year’s Houston Cinema Arts Festival last night at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Archival footage, new interviews and a narrative built from Joplin’s letters home, as read by Chan Marshall — better known as Cat Power — were meant to be a music film instead of a biopic, according to filmmaker Amy Berg, who was on hand for the screening.
One of the most exciting finds of the year for Richard Herskowitz, artistic director and curator for the Houston Cinema Arts Society Festival, was Krisha, a film by native Houstonian Trey Edward Shults. “This is one of the best debut films I’ve ever seen,” Herskowitz tells us.
The story follows a woman (played by Shults’ aunt Krisha Fairchild) who attends Thanksgiving dinner with her extended family after being away for ten years. Family secrets, wounds and jealousy soon turn the celebration into a confrontation. Shults shot Krisha in nine days in his Houston-area family home.
“The film was at SXSW and swept both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prizes, which is very, very rare,” Herskowitz says. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I hope this doesn’t open in Houston before the festival because we want to feature it.’ I was really happy when we were able to get it.”
Of the more than 40 feature-length films at this year’s Houston Cinema Arts Festival, eight — or approximately 20 percent — could safely be called “music movies”: one classic comedy starring a popular ’90s rap duo, a new film about a Sinatra-style lounge singer looking to regain his mojo, and six documentaries that cover everything from a youth orchestra in poverty-stricken Paraguay to the late Lone Star legends Janis Joplin and Doug Sahm. Now in its seventh year, the HCAF offers plenty to do besides watch movies – short films, animation, panels, artist’s talks, a “Meet the Makers” brunch, and an appearance by Houston native and Boyhood director Richard Linklater — but to us the festival’s especially strong musical component is its biggest selling point.
HOUSTON—Houston Cinema Arts Festival offers over 60 films and events Nov. 12-19 at several local venues. Highlights include all the space-based programing of CineSpace, which features the CineSpace contest, installations, and a spotlight on Filipino cinema. Notable celebrities include Richard Linklater, Luke and Owen Wilson, Kid ‘n’ Play and Houston native Trey Edward Shults, who will receive the Levantine Emerging Artist Award for Krisha, the hit of SXSW 2015. As always, because this is a Cinema arts festival, expect films on dance, theater, visual art, literature, and even architecture.
Traveling Light, with guest animator Laura Heit, takes place on Nov. 15 at She Works Flexible.
In 2008, when the Houston Cinema Arts Society hired Richard Herskowitz to run its newly minted Houston Cinema Arts Festival, the longtime film programmer wanted to shake up the standard way audiences experience film.
“At the time, there was an interest in cinema leaving the theater space and going into other environments to blend with film and live performance. One of the things that attracted me to the job was I wanted to do a festival that didn’t just show movies,” says Herskowitz, who, as HCAF artistic director, has helped bring guest artists such as Ethan Hawke, Robert Redford, Isabella Rossellini and Will Forte to the annual event.
Today, Herskowitz continues to operate outside the usual boundaries. The 2015 festival—which has expanded to an entire week, running November 12 through 19—includes customary motion picture screenings, of course, but also much more.
In 2008, when the Houston Cinema Arts Society hired Richard Herskowitz to run its newly minted Houston Cinema Arts Festival, the longtime film programmer wanted to shake up the standard way audiences experience film.
“At the time, there was an interest in cinema leaving the theater space and going into other environments to blend with film and live performance. One of the things that attracted me to the job was I wanted to do a festival that didn’t just show movies,” says Herskowitz, who, as HCAF artistic director, has helped bring guest artists such as Ethan Hawke, Robert Redford, Isabella Rossellini and Will Forte to the annual event.
On opening night of our seventh annual Festival, a great musical artist from Port Arthur, Texas, Bun B, will pay homage to his illustrious predecessor from the same hometown, Janis Joplin. Bun will lead the Q&A with Oscar nominated director Amy Berg, who has made a provocative film exploring Joplin’s music and her complicated relationship with her native state.
And so will begin the most Texas-centric Festival we have ever mounted. It’s partly so because of the Texas artists whose stories we’re featuring, including Doug Sahm, whose filmed biography will be told and hosted here by the great Austin-based music writer, now filmmaker, Joe Nick Patoski. Sahm, like Janis, took off and achieved fame in flower-powered San Francisco. Unlike Janis, Sahm lived long enough to reconnect deeply with his musical roots, returning to launch the Tex-Mex super group, The Texas Tornados.
The primary reason for our Texas emphasis is the explosion of cinematic talent here. Raised in Houston, Trey Edward Shults filmed Krisha last year in nearby Montgomery, and the film’s cinematic and emotional power blew everyone away at the SXSW Film Festival last March; it swept both the Grand Jury and Audience Prizes. Shults and his aunt, lead performer Krisha Fairchild, will be joined by other cast and crew as he screens his film at the MFAH and receives the first Levantine Emerging Artist Award from Levantine Films. Patrick Wang, born in Sugar Land, is returning home to present two independent films that have garnered much acclaim in the indie film community, In the Family and The Grief of Others. And former Houston SWAMP and Austin Film Society staff member Katie Cokinos is bringing her debut feature, I Dream Too Much, accompanied by its producer, our state’s most highly regarded director, Richard Linklater. Rick has been making biennial visits to our Festival since we launched it in 2009 with his wonderful Me and Orson Welles.
Given our fixation on our home city and state this year, it was only natural that we turned to our most illustrious agency, NASA, for a cinematic partnership. NASA has put up its amazing archive of space footage and photography online, and together we invited filmmakers around the world to create short films utilizing this material. 194 films were submitted and 16 exceptional short films were chosen to be screened at the CineSpace Awards Screening on Friday, November 13. Five of those, chosen by Richard Linklater and NASA judges, will earn cash prizes, and the audience will also get to vote on an audience prize winner. The awards screening is the centerpiece event of CineSpace Day at the MFAH, which will also include continuous screenings of Marco Brambilla’s Apollo XVIII and a free presentation by Time Magazine filmmakers of their ongoing online documentary series on astronaut Scott Kelly, A Year in Space. That’s not all, because more illustrious Texans are dropping by – William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert will present a 20th anniversary screening of their Oscar nominated Apollo 13, and Luke and Andrew Wilson will wrap up the day with their hilarious, space shuttle-crazy short film, Satellite Beach.
CineSpace will blast off from the MFAH and land at She Works Flexible gallery beside Brasil on Dunlavy and Westheimer, where artists Jeanne Liotta, Laura Heit, and Julia Oldham will present interactive, multimedia space-themed installations and performances on view through December 12. It will also pick up a Filipino passenger, Kidlat Tahimik, who will present a screening, an installation, and a live performance at Aurora Picture Show on November 13. Tahimik’s first two films, The Perfumed Nightmare and Who Invented the YoYo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy (both in our program), fantasized the creation of a Third World space program to rival NASA. Tahimik also says that the Apollo 6 mission inspired him to become a filmmaker, and that a visit to Houston and NASA has been a lifelong dream.
There is much more to read about in the highlights and film blurbs sections that follow, including our tribute to Kartemquin Films with its legendary founder, Gordon Quinn and documentary scholar and activist Patricia Aufderheide, and two presentations by the brilliant director, cinematographer, and theorist on black aesthetics, Arthur Jafa. These programs are co-sponsored with Aurora Picture Show, Project Row Houses, and SWAMP, just three of the many Houston arts organizations who collaborate with Houston Cinema Arts Society all year on planning and mounting our ambitious schedule.
Of course, the heart of our program is the extensive collection of the best new films by and about artists, and this year’s program includes a special emphasis on “Fringe Theater and Politics,” with three visiting experimental theater directors from Estonia and Israel, and on architecture, since we have joined forces with the excellent ArCH Film Festival and welcomed them into our program. As always, we are striving to highlight film’s interactions with other art forms with live music and film performances by Kid ‘n Play, Jones Family Singers, Dengue Fever’s Chhom Nimol and Zac Holtzman, and Hogan and Moss. Live-ness, embodied in our many Q&As with guest artists, the interactivity of our media installations, and our many musical and theatrical performances, is what festivals like ours aim to inject back into the movie-going, screen-gazing experience. So come alive with us for a week in November!
Journey to outer space through the magic of cinema with Houston Cinema Arts Festival’s (November 12-19) new CineSpace short-film competition. The festival and NASA partnered to invite filmmakers to submit short films that are at least 10 percent comprised of NASA imagery and video. Filmmaker Richard Linklater judged the entries, and CineSpace will screen the best of them on November 13 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, along with other space-themed films and a presentation of Marco Brambilla’s Apollo XVIII art installation.
Houston Cinema Arts Festival offers over 60 films and events Nov. 12-19 at several local venues, including the MFAH, Sundance Cinemas, She Works Flexible, Project Row Houses, Asia Society Texas Center, Aurora Picture Show, and more. Highlights include all the space based programing of CineSpace, which features the CineSpace contest, installations, and a spotlight on Filipino cinema. Notable celebrities include Richard Linklater, Luke and Owen Wilson, Kid ‘n’ Play and Houston native Trey Edward Shults, who will receive the Levantine Emerging Artist Award for Krisha, the hit of SXSW 2015. As always, because this is a Cinema arts festival, expect films on dance, theater, visual art, literature, and even architecture. Look for all kinds of Texas talent in this year’s programming as well. Editor-in-Chief Nancy Wozny visited with HCAF artistic director Richard Herskowitz on this year’s line-up.
Most of us know what New York City is like through film. Even those who have never been to the Big Apple can recognize Central Park’s horse-drawn carriages and tree-lined trails and Times Square jammed with crowds of sight-seers. Although it was refreshing to catch glimpses of our city’s iconic skyline in the new PBS series “The Brain,” with Baylor scientist David Eagleman, Houston – the most diverse city in the country – is an under-filmed place.
Money may be the root cause: Our state provides an anemic incentive program to attract movie makers to Texas. But just as important, Houston doesn’t have a well-developed film culture.
Yet, Houston’s status as a film outsider may be slowly changing. “In the last few years, there’s been a lot more indigenous film-making that’s representative of Houston’s ethnic make-up, and it’s beginning to be recognized on a national stage for the first time,” said Rick Ferguson, executive director of the Houston Film Commission.
Houston’s expanding film reach will be on display starting Nov. 12 at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival. For the first time in its seven-year history, the festival – founded by Houstonian Franci Neely – is heavy on Texas connections. “The primary reason for our Texas emphasis is the explosion of cinematic talent here,” Richard Herskowitz, Houston Cinema Arts Festival artistic director, said at Thursday’s kick-off. To give a few examples: Trey Edward Shults, who was raised in Houston, filmed “Krisha” last year in nearby Montgomery. It won two prizes at the SXSW Film Festival. Patrick Wang, born in Sugar Land, is returning home to present two films that have garnered much acclaim in the indie film community. And former Houston SWAMP and Austin Film Society staff member Katie Cokinos is bringing her debut feature, “I Dream Too Much,” to the festival. She’ll be accompanied by its producer, our state’s most highly regarded director, Richard Linklater to the festival.