Browsing Tag

film

Texas Asia Society Screens New Documentary Exploring the Lives of Trans Youth in Iran

Posted on January 24, 2023

On January 25, as part of the Festival of Films From Iran, the Texas Asia Society, in partnership with Rice Cinema, MFAH Films, and the Normal Anomaly Initiative, will present producer and director Saeed Gholipour’s 'This Is Not Me,' a moving documentary portrayal of the lives of two young transmasculine youth in Iran, Shervin and Saman, as they pursue the gender realignment options available to them.…

Cinematographer Bianca Cline on Filmmaking, Trans Representation, and ‘Marcel the Shell’

Posted on October 17, 2022

A photo of filmmaker Bianca Cline filming Marcel the Shell.

When Marcel hit theaters in the summer of 2022, millennials flocked to see the sentient one-inch seashell we had all come to know and love from the viral YouTube video of the same name. Marcel is charming and humorously witty and leaves viewers with that comforting tingle one can only experience following a healthy dose of nostalgia. The media frenzy surrounding Marcel’s release was more than Cline was used to, but it offered her the opportunity to not only discuss…

Texas Author Patricia Highsmith’s Queer Life Brought to the Screen in ‘Loving Highsmith’

Posted on September 16, 2022

A photo of Patricia Highsmith in Loving Highsmith.

Loving Highsmith, playing September 16–18, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, depicts the career of author Patricia Highsmith through the intimate lens of her love life. Patchy and irregular, the film encapsulates the aloof nature of queer love in a time gone by. Highsmith is perhaps best known for writing the Tom Ripley novels, as well as Strangers on a Train (1950)—the basis of Hitchcock’s 1951 film—and The Price of Salt (1952). The latter was first published under a…

The Art of Resistance: MFAH Presents New Documentary on Activist and Artist David Wojnarowicz

Posted on April 14, 2021

We’ve all seen the photo: a man, pictured from behind during a 1988 demonstration at the FDA headquarters. The back of his denim jacket contains a large inverted pink triangle and the justifiably livid words stenciled in white: IF I DIE OF AIDS—FORGET BURIAL—JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A. The man in the jacket is artist David Wojnarowicz, the subject of the new documentary film 'Wojnarowicz,' now playing as part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Virtual…

Houston Cinema Arts Festival Perseveres in the Pandemic with “Urbana”

Posted on November 10, 2020

A photo of Houston Cinema Arts Festival.

With cinemas the world over closed for the foreseeable future, I wasn’t sure we would get a Houston Cinema Arts Festival (HCAF) in 2020. Thankfully for us, the staff of the longstanding Houston arts institution have proven themselves flexible, offering 2020 solutions to 2020 problems. This year’s festival, which runs November 12–22, will take place virtually and in a drive-in format at the Moonstruck, Show Boat, and Houston Ballet drive-in theatres, creating a pandemic-friendly cinema experience.…

QFest 2020: Houston’s Annual LGBTQ Film Fest Hits Virtual Screens Sept. 24–28

Posted on September 23, 2020

The 24th annual QFest, Houston’s international LGBTQ film festival returns to screens this September 24–28—virtual screens, that is. This year’s fest will be held completely online, hosted by Cinenso, and feature nine feature films and 19 shorts from over 15 countries that highlight a variety of new filmmakers and stories. “I feel that people who engage with us this year will probably get the clearest understanding of what QFest has always meant to us,” says Kristian Salinas, executive and artistic…

Queers on Screen: What to Watch While Quarantined

Posted on April 1, 2020

Representation matters. The way we and our communities are portrayed matters. In observing queer characters in books, movies, and on television, we see options for who we can be and validation of who we already are. As human beings, we are in constant need of affirmation that we are not alone—that our thoughts and experiences aren’t isolated.…

On ‘Daughters of the Dust’ and the Radical Reconceptualization of Black Female Iconography

Posted on March 12, 2020

“What’s past is prologue.” One of the first lines uttered in director Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but it is redeployed here by the character Viola Peazant. Used as a means of creating distance between herself and the islands from which she hails, the quote grounds the discourse of the film to follow. The past is a place, both physical and psychic, and how much of that place we carry forward with us…

Cowboy Boogie: Houston Cinema Arts Festival Returns with Queer Yeehaw and More

Posted on November 8, 2019

The annual Houston Cinema Arts Festival returns to screens this November 14–18, boasting a programming lineup teeming with films made by and about LGBTQ people. “We wanted every single side of the spectrum to be represented,” says Michael Robinson, Houston Cinema Arts Society marketing and communications manager. “Not just, ‘Oh okay, cool, we have the one queer film.’ It really was making sure [queer identity] was something that was represented in a lot of different avenues.”…

Pain and Glory: The Queer Magic of Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar

Posted on November 5, 2019

It’s almost midnight. I’ve just walked out of the movie theater, but I haven’t quite returned to reality. There were only three of us at the screening, the last one of the film’s run at the River Oaks Theatre in Houston. This cinema, with its opulent 1940s interior, always has a profound effect on me. It’s in the way that it displaces me, more so releases me, while keeping my being intact. I can still respond to the blend of…

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