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.

Meet the Makers
For the third year, Cinema Arts Festival Houston presents this series of in-depth discussions and informal encounters with our featured artists. All programs are free.

Artful Thursday with Lynn Hershman Leeson
Thursday, November 10, 6:30-7:30 PM, Museum of Fine Arts Houston Brown Auditorium

Afterward, see !Women Art Revolution in its entirety at 8:00 PM in the MFAH Brown Auditorium Theater as part of the 2011 Cinema Arts Festival Houston.

Documentary Feature Production
With Jena Moreno, Alex Luster, Ford Gunter and Carlton Ahrens
Thursday, November 10, 10:00am, Museum of Fine Arts Houston Brown Auditorium

Last year, these Houston filmmakers showed tantalizing clips from their documentaries as works in progress at Cinema Arts Festival Houston. This year, both Jena Moreno and Alex Luster premiered their completed documentaries, Stitched and Stick ’Em Up, to large crowds and great acclaim in Houston and beyond, while Ford Gunter and Carlton Ahrens have wrapped Art Car: The Movie for its world premiere as this festival’s closing-night event.

In a discussion moderated by Alfred Cervantes, the Houston Film Commission’s deputy director, the filmmakers will discuss what they learned and what to look out for in bringing a feature documentary to completion. They will share stories about hanging with art car builders, illegal street artists and cutthroat competitive quilters.

Cinema on the Verge
With Braden King and Miwa Matreyek
Saturday, November 12, 1:00 PM, Talento Bilingue de Houston

Join artists Braden King and Miwa Matreyek as they walk through and discuss the media installations they have mounted at the Talento Bilingue de Houston. These installations supplement live performances that King and Matreyek will present at TBH on November 11 and 12, and give a broader view of their art practices. Both King and Matreyek make films, but also create an “expanded cinema” of live performance and installation. King and Matreyek will talk and answer questions about their experimentation with multiple screens and conventions of film presentation.

Play the Mini-Klompen with Trimpin!
Saturday, November 12, 3:00-4:00 PM and 6:00-6:30 PM, Edwards Grand Palace Lobby (theater ticket required for access)

Before and after the 4:00 PM screening of the feature film, Trimpin: The Sound of Invention!, the artist Trimpin will demonstrate the Mini-Klompen installation (pictured above, part of the festival’s Cinema on the Verge series), a percussion sculpture made of dozens of wooden clogs. He will also talk about and answer questions about his “Sextet for Laptop Percussion” (on view at One Allen Center November 7-11) and other inventions seen in the documentary about his work.

A sound sculptor, composer, engineer and inventor, Trimpin has been hailed in New York’s Village Voice as “a genius at circuitry and machinery as well as acoustics and musical structure [who] manufactures orchestras that play themselves.” A specialist in interfacing computers with traditional instruments, he has developed ways of playing everything from giant marimbas to stacks of electric guitars via computer.

In 1997, Trimpin received both a MacArthur “Genius” Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship for his creative investigations of acoustic music in spatial relationship.

Investing in Indie Films: Risks and Rewards
With Temple Fennell
Saturday, November 12, 3:00 PM, Freed Auditorium in the Glassell School of Art

Mr. Fennell will present both the macro- and microeconomics of the specialty release in the independent film industry. Specialty release films often dominate the Oscars (The King’s Speech, Black Swan, Little Miss Sunshine), but often come with significant risk and limited upside for the initial investors. The presentation will cover the five risks typically overlooked or unknown by investors financing specialty films. Mr. Fennell will discuss five essential questions investors need to understand prior to production:

1. What is a film worth in the marketplace?
2. What percentage of the budget should be financed with equity?
3. What are the risks of not having a U.S. distributor attached before production?
4. How much will it cost to market and distribute a film, and how does this impact profitability?
5. Can you control marketing costs in order to manage profitability?

Mr. Fennell is the CEO and co-founder of ATO Pictures, LLC with producer Johnathan Dorfman, internationally acclaimed musician Dave Matthews and music industry leaders Coran Capshaw, Michael McDonald and Chris Tetzeli. ATO (Art Takes Over) is a motion picture finance, production and distribution company that distributes films in U.S. market (Mao’s Last Dancer, Casino Jack, Terri). ATO is part of a group of media companies including Red Light Management — the largest privately owned music artist management company in the world — and ATO Records Group.

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