Houston Cinema Arts Society Announces Program for November Cinema and Media Arts Festival

Houston, Texas — October 17, 2008 — The Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS), announced its festival preview of cinematic programs on November 20-23, 2008, featuring internationally renowned media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and rising digital media artist and filmmaker Alex Rivera. Curator Richard Herskowitz has deliberately programmed this Cinema and Media Arts Festival to serve as a framework for the full week-long festival that will launch in November 2009. Central to each year’s festival will be tributes to influential media artists whose work will be explored in depth, and who will engage in on-stage conversations with leading artists and critics about their careers. Surrounding these centerpiece programs will be an array of live events integrating cinema, music, and performance, outdoor projections, interactive installations in galleries, and Internet-designed and generated movies, as well as theatrical presentations of international films and videos.

According to Herskowitz, “Lynn Hershman Leeson and Alex Rivera are emblematic of the kind of media artists we plan to feature and celebrate. Leeson, who has made several feature films with Tilda Swinton, will present the American premiere of their latest short video collaboration, Curing the Vampire. She will also do a live demonstration of her interactive art gallery on Second Life, the Internet community. Alex Rivera is a young Latino media artist, who has recently leapt from low-budget, activist video art to feature film production. Rivera’s Sleep Dealer which will open theatrically in 2009, won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.”

Tickets for each of the scheduled events are $10 per adult; $8 for seniors and students and can be purchased on-line at www.cinemartsociety.org or at the box office prior to each event.

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

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

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 audience will immediately follow the program
Part One: New Media Projects
Saturday, November 22, 7 p.m., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Brown Auditorium

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

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 interactive video art disk, Lorna (1979-82); her video installation, A Room of One’s Own, and a screening of her Electronic Diary: An Ongoing Life-Cycle Video Series.

Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) is a non-profit organization funded in part by Jim and Franci Crane and grants from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance and Houston Convention & Entertainment Facilities Department. The Houston Downtown Alliance and Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP) serve as fiscal sponsors of Houston Cinema Arts Society.

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For additional information on this release, please contact:

Lisa Albracht

Phone: (281) 888-3854

Email:

Source: Cinema Arts Society

Website: http://www.cinemartsociety.org