SPECIAL EVENTS

2011 Cinema Arts Festival Houston is a unique, five-day film festival celebrating the visual, literary and performing arts. Works are shown not only in traditional theatrical venues but also via interactive video installations, live music and film performances, and outdoor projections.

2011 Levantine Cinema Arts Award Recipient
ETHAN HAWKE (pictured, in character for "The Woman in the Fifth")

Saturday, November 12, 7:00 PM, Museum of Fine Arts Brown Auditorium
Houston Premiere: The Woman in the Fifth
Followed by a conversation with Ethan Hawke, moderated by Joe Leydon

Sunday, November 13, 1:00 PM, Edwards Grand Palace
10th Anniversary Screening: Tape
Followed by a conversation with director Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke, moderated by Ernie Manouse

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.

His talents and accomplishments, however, extend far beyond film acting, and it is this broad artistic resume that 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, which was nominated for more Tony Awards than any play in history. He also starred in Jack O’Brien‘s production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, which won the Tony for best revival. Off Broadway he had a smash 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 both an actor and a director.

He has written two novels, The Hottest State and Ash Wednesday. In 2006, Hawke adapted and directed The Hottest State as a movie he also appeared in and then brought to the Venice Film Festival for its world premiere. His film directorial debut was Chelsea Walls, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.

For over fifteen years, Hawke has had a close collaboration with his friend, renowned, Austin-based indie director Richard Linklater. Linklater cast him in Before Sunrise in 1995, then The Newton Boys (1998), Waking Life and Tape (a double-header in 2001), and Fast Food Nation (2006). In 2004, when Linklater and Hawke reunited for Before Sunset, Hawke came on board as co-writer and earned an Academy Award nomination. And in Linklater’s 12-year film project following the growth of a boy from age six through twelfth grade, Ethan Hawke is playing the dad.

The Woman in the Fifth is Ethan Hawke’s latest film as an actor and, for him, it was another marvelous collaboration with a great director — Pawel Pawlikowski (The Last Resort, My Summer of Love).

Check the website beginning October 18 to view the festival lineup and buy tickets to screenings (www.cinemartsociety.org).