The Houston Cinema Arts Society presents the 2009 Cinema Arts Festival Houston, November 11 - 15, 2009. Please stay tuned throughout the year for more information about the 2009 Festival.
Join the Houston Cinema Arts Society at Richmond Hall on Saturday, April 25 for screenings of the Andy Warhol Screen Tests part of the Menil Arts Community Open House.
Screening: Andy Warhol Screen Tests
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Location: Richmond Hall – The Menil Collection
1500 Richmond Avenue
Hours: 3 – 7 pm
Andy Warhol filmed 472 films between 1964 and 1966 that have become known as the Screen Tests. Callie Angell writes: “The simplicity of the basic Screen Test format—each a silent, black-and-white close-up of a person lasting three minutes—and the casualness and rapidity with which these films were produced are offset by their conceptual sophistication and by their centrality to Warhol’s work as a portrait artist in the mediums of both film and painting…Like a yearbook of the mid-1960s avant-garde, the Screen Tests contain photographic portraits of a diverse population of cultural figures, all linked through their shared connection, however brief, with Warhol and his camera: poets, artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, models, speed freaks, opera queens, street people, performers, a smattering of celebrities ….”
A DVD selection of Screen Tests, scored by Dean and Britta, has recently been released on DVD and is on sale at the Menil Bookstore. The Houston Cinema Arts Society has collected a group of ten portraits (Reel #5 from the group of Screen Tests preserved by the Museum of Modern Art) that will be screened on 16mm film, the medium in which they were shot, continuously from 3-7pm. The subjects of the screen tests are Dennis Hopper, Peter Hujar, Bruce Rudow, Patrick Fleming, Helmut, Ivy Nicholson, Jane Holzer, Walter Dainwood, Paul Katz….and Francois de Menil, who was twenty years old and studying acting in New York City when he sat in a chair in Warhol’s Factory and posed.
Andy Warhol Screen Test:
Dennis Hopper, 1964 Black-and-white, silent, 4 minutes at 16 fps
©2009 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
A Free “Menil Arts Community Open House” Is Set For Saturday, April 25, 3 - 9 pm
On Saturday, April 25, from 3 – 9 p.m., the Menil museum and a group of surrounding non-profit organizations will host a free afternoon of art and entertainment that will extend across the Menil “campus” from West Alabama to Richmond Avenue. Films and performances, from jazz to literary readings, will be held in and around the Menil’s five buildings for art: the 1987 museum designed by architect Renzo Piano to house and display the art collection assembled by Dominique and John de Menil, Cy Twombly Gallery, The Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, and Richmond Hall (the permanent installation of work by Dan Flavin).
The trademark gray bungalows that dot the campus will also be involved. In recent years, an increasing number of Houston’s premier mid-sized arts organizations have become the tenants of those bungalows. On Saturday, April 25, 2009, a dozen of them—including Aurora Picture Show, Inprint, Writers in the Schools, Da Camera, Houston Center for Photography—join together to co-host with The Menil Collection the first Menil Arts Community Open House. (A full list of co-sponsoring organizations is below.)
Beginning at 3 p.m., visitors to the Menil neighborhood can attend free music performances, film screenings, art exhibitions, and programs of the spoken word. Schedules will be available at each performance and at all participating organizations, where staff members will be on hand to share information and answer questions about their groups. The Open House concludes at 8 pm, with a one-hour, free, outdoor screening of short films by Texas filmmakers at Aurora Picture Show (1524 Sul Ross).
Snacks and refreshments can be purchased at The Menil Collection Bookstore, and from food vendors parked around the campus. Those intending to stay for the film should bring blankets or lawnchairs. Limited street parking is available throughout the neighborhood. Visitors can park free at the museum parking lot on West Alabama, between Mandell and Mulberry.
For more information, visit menil.org, or the websites of the following organizations.
Menil Neighborhood Arts Non-Profit Organizations:
Aurora Picture Show, www.aurorapictureshow.org • Collage – Art for Cancer, www.collageartforcancer.org • Da Camera of Houston, www.dacamera.com • Houston Center for Photography, www.hcponline.org • Houston Cinema Arts Society, www.cinemartsociety.org • Inprint, www.inprinthouston.org • Rothko Chapel, www.rothkochapel.org • Southwest Alternate Media Project, www.swamp.org • Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts, www.talarts.org • United Nations Association International Choir, www.unahouston.org/unachoir • Watercolor Arts Society-Houston, www.watercolorhouston.org • Writers in the Schools, www.witshouston.org
Screening and Conversation with Filmmaker Alex Rivera, FREE
Thursday, November 20, 2:30 p.m., Rice Media Center, Rice University
Free and open to the public
Film and video maker Alex Rivera will discuss his career and present examples from his early autobiographical work through his first feature film including the full documentary, The Sixth Section. He will demonstrate the new on-line art project Low Drone about the Mexico/U.S. border. This session is free and open to the public.
Screening of Sleep Dealer (www.sleepdealer.com, 90 min.) and conversation with filmmaker Alex Rivera
Thursday, November 20, 7 p.m., River Oaks Landmark Theater
$10 general admission
$8 seniors and students
Video artist and filmmaker Alex Rivera has created a visually dazzling feature-length debut film which explores contemporary economic globalization through a science fiction narrative. In Sleep Dealer, Mexican laborers tap into a virtual reality of labor for American factories, without ever entering the country and threatening the populace. After the film, Rivera will talk about the process of creating his first feature film and talk with the audience about his work.
Alex Rivera: Video and New Works
Friday, November 21, 7 p.m., Aurora Picture Show
$10 general admission
$8 seniors and students
In conversation with Margarita de la Vega-Hurtado, film scholar and curator, Alex Rivera, video artist and filmmaker, will discuss and present video art works from 1995-2006, that preceded his first feature film Sleep Dealer. Rivera will screen Papapapá, Dia de La Independencia, Braceros, Cybraceros and The Borders Trilogy.
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Screening and Conversation
Reception for the artist and guests will immediately follow the program
Part One: New Media Projects
Saturday, November 22, 7 p.m., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Brown Auditorium
$10 general admission (includes reception)
$8 seniors and students (includes reception)
Lynn Hershman Leeson will join festival curator Richard Herskowitz for a conversation on her latest digital media projects. During the conversation she will premiere her new film, Curing the Vampire (25 min.) in which she portrays Gene Ware, a character from the virtual world of Second Life. Leeson and Oscar-award winning actress Tilda Swinton pose questions to a selection of guests, including a politician, journalist, scientist and lawyer. Leeson will do a live demonstration of her interactive on-line archive on Second Life, Life Squared. To conclude the evening, she will show a preview of her upcoming feature documentary, which combines interviews, artwork, and rarely seen archival film and video footage chronicling the feminist art movement in the United States from 1968 to the present.
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Screening and Conversation
Part Two: Early Explorations
Sunday, November 23, 2 p.m., Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Brown Auditorium
$10 general admission
$8 seniors and students
The Sunday afternoon program will explore the roots of Hershman Leeson’s current new media work in her early video and performance art exploring the formation of identity, including her 25 Windows (The Windows of Bonwit Teller) and Binge and Re-Covered Diary from First Person Plural: The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman.
Tickets are available at the box office or at www.instantseats.com
The Houston Cinema Arts Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to enriching Houston’s cultural environment through the art of cinema, mixed-media performances and installations. HCAS is an umbrella organization supporting a variety of initiatives and programs including regular screenings, performances, guest lectures and the annual Houston Media and Cinema Arts Festival. Each November the Festival will exhibit film and digital media of extraordinary quality including narrative, documentary, experimental films and mixed-media installations.
For more information about this festival, the CASH organization please sign up for our RSS feed. Additionally, you can email us at cinemartsociety@gmail.com
