Cinema Arts Festival Houston, the local five-day film festival that focuses on work by and about artists, has released its initial lineup for this year's inception. The festival is going into its third year and includes live performances to complement film screenings of both classics and new work.
This year, the festival will kick off on November 9 with the regional premiere of director David Grubin's Downtown Express, a love story about a violinist-in-training at Juilliard who joins his girlfriend's eclectic, experimental band. The main character is played by violinist Philippe Quint. Singer-songwriter Nellie McKay plays his girlfriend.
Quint will also perform live at the Houston premiere.
The festival will also see the world premiere of the much-anticipated Art Car: The Movie, a documentary about Houston's own art car movement, produced by local filmmakers Carlton Ahrens and Ford Gunter.
Also included on the initial lineup: Upstream, the 1927 silent John Ford classic, accompanied by the Donald Sosin Ensemble and students from Rice's Shepherd School of Music.
Miwa Matreyek will present her latest multimedia-animation-performance piece, Myth and Infrastructure, at Talento Bilingüe de Houston.
Documentarian Braden King will be on hand for his feature film HERE as well as his live hybrid film-concert HERE [THE STORY SLEEPS].
Lynn Hershman Leeson's !Women Art Revolution, a documentary on the history of feminist art that includes interviews with artists such as Judy Chicago and the Guerilla Girls.
The Mill and the Cross, a new film by Polish artist Lech Majewski, which was inspired by Peter Bruegel's painting The Procession to Calvary and starring Rutger Hauer, Michael York and Charlotte Rampling.
Over Your Cities the Grass Will Grow, Sophie Fiennes's profile of artist Anselm Kiefer.
The festival will also include Cinema on the Verge, a series of video installations by Leeson, King, Matreyek and Majewski.
More films and talent will be confirmed later, so watch this space for updates. For more information, visit www.cinemaartsociety.org.
