Houston Cinema Arts Festival
The 2012 Houston Cinema Arts Festival is the fourth annual festival presented by the Houston Cinema Arts Society, and the only U.S. festival devoted to films by and about visual, performing, and literary artists. The first three editions have featured inspiring programs, screenings, performances, installations, and panels, with an extraordinary array of guests each year. The MFAH is proud to again serve as one of the festival’s venues.
For the complete schedule of films, and to purchase tickets, call 713.222.5400 or click here.
Tickets are not available through the MFAH website.
Past Films in This Series
2012
Directed by Liz Garbus
In Person: Director Liz Garbus Oscar-nominated director Liz Garbus draws upon never-before-seen personal correspondence, diary entries, and letters to reveal an unknown Marilyn Monroe. The person who emerges, writes Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman, is “not the walking sex bomb, or the dysfunctionally insecure child-woman, either (though she could, on occasions, be both), but a dauntingly complex woman who was far more ambitious than she’s commonly given credit for, who rigorously achieved everything that she did.” Garbus works with acclaimed ...
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2011
Directed by Lincoln Mayorga
With piano performance by director Lincoln Mayorga When Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, a prize-winning young Jewish pianist was forced to abandon her musical studies in Vienna and return to her home in Latvia. There, she was arrested and sent to a Soviet labor camp, where she endured seven years of hunger and cold. Thirty years in the making, A Suitcase Full of Chocolate recounts the extraordinary story of Sofia Cosma, a brilliant pianist whose career was suppressed by the ...
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2012, in Italian with English subtitles
Directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
Winner of the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear, Caesar Must Die is the latest offering from filmmaking brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. Inventive and beautifully composed, the film centers on a prison production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Like many films of its kind, Caesar Must Die takes the audience from auditions to rehearsals to the actual performance on stage. What sets the cast of this play apart, however, is that it consists entirely of inmates from Rebibbia Prison in Rome. The ...
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2012
Directed by David O. Russell
Based on Matthew Quick’s novel, Silver Linings Playbook is a smart and hilarious offering from the unconventional and talented David O. Russell, director of Three Kings and The Fighter. In a sincere and nuanced performance, Bradley Cooper is Pat, who suffers a personal and professional meltdown that lands him in a state mental institution for eight months. Released and living back at his parents’ home without a job, wife, or life, he starts over with their help and that of ...
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2011, in Chinese with English subtitles
Directed by Ann Hui
In person: Roger Lee, screenwriter and producer A Simple Life, winner of the five top Hong Kong Film Awards (best picture, actor, actress, director, and screenplay), is the latest offering from veteran director Ann Hui. Moving and heartfelt, the film centers on the bond between servant Ah Tao (Deanie Ip), who has served the Leung family for more than 60 years, and film producer Roger (Andy Lau), the only Leung family member still living in Hong Kong. When Ah Tao’s health ...
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2011
Directed by Felipe Ugarte and Juantxo Sardón
Mugaritz restaurant in Errenteria, Spain, was voted the fourth best in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2008. Its chef, Andoni Luis Aduriz, has a self-described “techno-emotional” approach to cuisine. For three years, musician Felipe Ugarte studied Aduriz’s culinary formulas. Ugarte transforms his thorough knowledge about the history, technique, philosophy, ingredients, and presentation of each dish into a song that reflects those same aspirations through music. The results are captured in this stunning film exploring the avant-garde in both fields. ...
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2012
Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Following the sceening, stay for a conversation with the film's director, Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and Lynn Wyatt, founding chair of the MFAH film committee. Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel is an intimate portrait and a vibrant celebration of one of the most influential women of the 20th century, an enduring icon whose influence changed the face of fashion, beauty, art, publishing, and culture forever. During Diana Vreeland’s 50-year reign as the “Empress of Fashion,” she launched Twiggy, advised Jackie ...
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