Houston Cinema Arts Festival

HCAF 2024 will feature a wide variety of curated feature films with a focus on the diverse cultural community of Houston, Texas.

HCAF 2024 will also see the tenth Anniversary of CineSpace, our annual short film competition with NASA, as well as the fifth annual regional short film competition Borders - No Borders.

Our full festival lineup has been announced. Check out the schedule to discover the incredible films, performances, and special guests we have in store!

Schedule of Events:

10:00 AM: Workshop: Cinematography on Celluloid

Cinematography on Celluloid is a hands-on workshop that will show the technical and creative side of celluloid filmmaking. The workshop will go over workflow on celluloid and provide information so you're ready to shoot your next project on film!

We will also be shooting a scene where students will get hands-on and operate the cameras. This scene will also simulate and inform on what to be aware of when shooting celluloid. Shooting on various formats from Super 35 with the Panavision Millennium XL2, 16mm on the SR2 and Bolex Systems, and super 8 with various cameras

Kelvin Kataria is a Peruvian-Indian Director of Photography based in Los Angeles. Kelvin is a huge proponent of prep and commitment to the story, as opposed to focusing on beautiful visuals alone. With over six years experience as a working as a narrative DP; Kelvin's approach to cinematography stems from his involvement to the arts community and from filmmakers community engagement.

Kelvin is a Cohort in Issa Rae's Find Your People program as a cinematographer and is an ambassador for Assistant Camera Friends Community. He's also a member of ASCF Celluloid Community

10:30 AM: Spaces of Exception

The Palestinian refugee camp and the American Indian reservation - each sites under the constant threat of genocide at the hands of colonial forces - are observed and juxtaposed in an attempt to understand the significance of the land, its memory and divisions, and the conditions for life, community, and sovereignty. Shot between 2014 and 2017, SPACES OF EXCEPTION features interviews with members of the American Indian Movement, the Mohawk Warrior Society, and Diné families resisting displacement on Black Mesa, as well as Palestinian militant organizations based in the camps, alongside environmental activists, autonomous youth committees, and the families of political prisoners and martyrs. A timely and resonant work from co-directors Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny, the film does more than give human face to the headlines: it gives a voice to those who are rarely spoken for.

Director: Matt Peterson, Malek Rasamny
Runtime: 90 minutes

1:00 pm: Us and the Night

Night after night, two library workers cross paths as castaways among the aisles. A pair of adventurers, their wordplay is written in books placed on the shelf each for the other to find as the library's symmetry, rhythms, and recurrences form a fantastic geography for their stories and escapades. Director-writer Audrey Lam weaves through the labyrinthine shelves of the library, grabbing books at random, and flipping through their pages with the abandon of a speed reader. Captured on lush 16mm over the course of ten years, the script is a clever and seemingly endless reference material with sly nods to the works of Italo Calvino, Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Rhys, and Emily Dickinson. A book-ish love story, open and closed at both end

Director: Audrey Lam
Runtime: 67 minutes

1:30 pm: In Performance: Dory Previn Covers

Opening her 1970 solo debut album with the song "Scared to be Alone," noted lyricist of songs for Dionne Warwick, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland, Dory Previn announced herself as an artist in her own right. Raw and starkly autobiographical, her lyrics laid bare a complex life with humor and grace, winning the musician the admiration of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Elton John, and Jarvis Cocker, seeing her later covered by Father John Misty and immortalized by Camera Obscura. Previn's songs will be interpreted by Julia Greenberg, a singer-songwriter who has been performing, studying and archiving the music of Dory Previn since 2008, and cult musician Gretchen Phillips in a special one-time-only performance before the Houston premiere of DORY PREVIN: ON MY WAY TO WHERE, a new documentary on the one-of-a-kind musician.

2:15 pm: Dory Previn: On My Way To Where

A former model and chorus girl, Dory Previn first rose to notoriety as a lyricist for Hollywood films such as THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and THE STERILE CUCKOO. Her work with husband composer André Previn led to critical plaudits and several Academy Award nominations before their partnership came to a traumatic end following André's affair with 23-year old Mia Farrow, leading to a months-long hospitalization. This life-altering moment ignited a radical act of self-love and acceptance from Dory: starting with her 1970 autobiographical album On My Way to Where, she reinvented herself as a singer-songwriter in a series of introspective albums that paired her trademark sharp wit with haunting confessional tales of loneliness, loss, and self-doubt. Co-directors Julia Greenberg and Dianna Dilworth combine archival footage, interviews, animation, and Previn's own journal entries and lyrics in a refreshing documentary, avoiding the redemption arc we've come to expect to tell the altogether more powerful story of a woman who dared to confront her own complexity.

Director: Julia Greenberg, Dianna Dilworth
Runtime: 79 minutes

2:30 pm: Houston Stories: For the Rebels

New to this year's Houston Cinema Arts Festival, "Houston Stories: For the Rebels" is a collection of short films by emerging Houston filmmakers, featuring documentary, narrative, and animated projects. While loosely centered around themes of rebellion, these films explore the spirit of those who challenge the status quo and push boundaries in Houston's ever-evolving landscape through personal narratives and bold cultural reflections. From stories of resistance and perseverance to acts of creative defiance, this program celebrates the diverse voices shaping the city's unique character.

4:30 pm: Workshop: From the Ground Up, Producing with Academy Award winner Amy Hobby

The work of American film producer Amy Hobby spans feature-length narratives, documentaries, television, and webseries. Her credits include SECRETARY, HAMLET, and WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and won an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award. A longtime champion of independent filmmaking, Hobby is the co-founder of Distribution Advocates, an organization working to "collectively reclaim power for independent storytellers in the current systems of distribution and exhibition." In this guided workshop moderated by Alfred Cervantes of the Houston Film Commission, Hobby shares her unique behind-the-scenes perspective gained from 20+ years of producing motion pictures and offers tips and helpful advice to filmmakers hoping to get their project into production.

5:00 pm: All, or Nothing at All [Version 2]

In the vast 270,000 square meters of retail sprawl of Shanghai's Global Harbor, two pairs of young adults traverse the loneliness of contemporary China, first as a lovestruck amateur filmmaker and the object of his obsession, a cosmetics salesgirl, then as an aspiring architect enamored with a dance instructor. Using an innovative two-part conception which can be played in any order, Chinese director/co-writer Zhang and South Korean co-writer Hee Young Pyun capture the emptiness reflected in the sheen of the shopping mall's marble halls with a script that moves as an escalator, delivering the viewer to whichever conclusion they prefer to arrive at.

Director: Jiajun 'Oscar' Zhang
Runtime: 124 minutes

6:00 pm: RATS!

Fresno, Texas, 2007. It was just a bit of graffiti that landed Raphael Tinski (Luke Wilcox) in the county jail. What happened next would make him wish he'd never left his cell: the community service, the sting operation, the suicide, the emo girl, Steve Irwin, Flophouse's new mix-tape, the meth pipes, the FBI, the WMDs, and, oh yeah, the serial killer. Sure, it's all a bit much, but in Fresno - what's a kid to do?
Featuring a series of truly demented appearances from the likes of John Ennis (MR. SHOW), Jacob Wysocki (UNFRIENDED), Pineapple Tangaroa (DRUNK BUS), Luxy Banner (LOUSY CARTER), John Valley (THE PIZZAGATE MASSACRE), and in his final performance, Neville Archambault (13 CAMERAS), the first feature from Maxwell Nalevansky and Carl Fry is a hilarious, unpredictable gross-out comedy with as much guts as heart. To call it one of the most disgusting films in recent memory is truly an honor.

Director: Maxwell Nalevansky, Carl Fry
Runtime: 87 minutes

8:00 pm: It Was All a Dream

From Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, producer, and writer dream hampton, former music journalist for publications like The Source and The Village Voice, comes an intimate chronicle of the dawn of hip-hop's golden era. By pointing her camera at the likes of Snoop Dogg, Method Man, and the Notorious B.I.G right before they took over the charts, she does not just capture their raw testimonies on the upcoming cultural shift that will make them superstars, but also examines the fraught relationship between hip-hop and feminism and how the two informed her life and career as a storyteller and filmmaker. A deeply resonant work of intimacy, more urgent than ever.

Director: dream hampton
Runtime: 83 minutes

10:30 pm: In Performance: Kam Franklin

This event is All Access Passholder and Guest Artist Exclusive. Event generously underwritten by HCAS Board Member Justice Tirapelli-Jamail and Co-Presented by Wonky Power.