Of the hundreds of film festivals held each year in the U.S., Cinema Arts Festival Houston, held November 10-14, 2010, is the only festival specifically programmed to celebrate films by and about visual, performing, and literary artists. With support from city leaders, enthusiastic patrons and a highly developed network of arts organizations, the festival is a truly civic project, conceived to highlight one the most vibrant and diverse arts communities on earth.
Joining for the festival’s sophomore year are silver screen icons Isabella Rossellini, Shirley MacLaine, and John Turturro. Ms. Rossellini will present her own short works produced for the Sundance Channel, Green Porno and Seduce Me at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she will receive Houston-based Levantine Entertainment’s Levantine Cinema Arts Award. At the Rice Media Center, co-founded by her father Roberto Rossellini 40 years ago, Ms. Rossellini will present a special screening of Viaggio in Italia, the 1954 film directed by her father and starring her mother, Ingrid Bergman. Ms. MacLaine will be on hand to accept the Texas Film Award at a screening of the classic Houston, Texas film, Terms of Endearment. Actor and Director John Turturro will kick things off on opening night with a screening of Passione, his new “musical adventure” about Neapolitan music and dance. Alex Gibney, who directed the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, will present My Trip To Al Qaeda (2010), and his current project, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010); he will be joined by collaborators, and award-winning authors Lawrence Wright and Peter Elkind. Bill Plympton, the king of independent animation, will present his masterful new feature, Idiots and Angels, and the winning films he selected for this year’s Independent Exposure 2010.