Houston Cinema Arts Society

Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) is dedicated to fostering the development of Houston’s film community through innovative film programs celebrating the artistic process and serving audiences, filmmakers, and greater Houston communities. Houston has a robust arts community but there is opportunity for Houston's film community and industry to evolve and flourish and HCAS can play an important role in this development. The purpose of HCAS’s programs to serve film audiences as well as filmmakers, and make cementing a Houston film community more real, while continuing to reflect and celebrate film along with the other interlocking art forms.

HCAS also seeks to celebrate Houston’s diversity by evoking what’s happening around the world and around the corner. In supporting Houston's diversity and diverse filmmakers, and amplifying an increasingly diverse Houston back at itself through the participation of global leading filmmakers and artists -- we empower Houston more broadly.

The jewel in the crown of HCAS’s programming is the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, a multi-venue, multi-discipline film and arts festival having its 12th outing in 2020, taking place every November, during the city’s fall arts season. The goal of HCAF is bridge Houston’s leading arts organizations, artists and filmmakers with the larger independent, US and international film, and arts community and industry.

The festival also includes Cinespace, a short film competition in partnership with NASA, based around films that use NASA archival footage, and Field Trip, a free film and speaker program for Houston's young people.

In 2019 the Black Media Story Summit-Texas was also added to the festival and we plan to continue it in 2020. The first summit took place at the historic Deluxe Theater in the 5th Ward, in partnership with the national film funder Black Public Media and the Austin Film Society. The free all-day conference was attended by over 100 filmmakers and stakeholders from Houston, Dallas and Austin. The purpose is to facilitate the field building that will help diverse filmmakers live and work (and thrive) in their own region.

HCAS’s upcoming year round programming includes the expansion of Field Trip, a free film and speaker series for Houston's young people. The expanded Field Trip series will kick off monthly in September 2020 and run through May 2021 at the Rice Media Center on campus, in partnership with the Rice Media Center, and Rice’s Department of Multicultural Community Relations.

Field Trip, taking place in partnership with Houston’s secondary schools during school hours, will include thematic programming for National Hispanic Heritage Month, Veteran’s Day, World AIDS Day, The Chinese New Year, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Earth Day and Cinco de Mayo. The monthly film and speaker programs will be accompanied by a tour of the Rice campus.

HCAF is also expanding its year round programming in partnership with Houston arts institutions including the Deluxe Theater, The Museum of Fine Arts, The Asia Society Center-Texas, and the Winston Contemporary Art Gallery beginning monthly in April 2020.