Ragnar Kjartansson @ Barbican Centre, London

Ragnar Kjartansson
Barbican Centre, London
Through 4 September 2016

Opening 14 July 2016 at Barbican Art Gallery, this is the first ever UK survey of the work of the internationally acclaimed Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, charting his wide-ranging practice across film and performance, and his less well known work as a painter and draughtsman. Born into a family active in Iceland’s theatre scene, Kjartansson draws from a varied history of stage traditions, film, music and literature from Icelandic storytelling to opera music to contemporary pop culture. His performances, video installations, drawings and paintings explore the boundary between fact and fiction, as well as constructs of myth and identity. Donning various guises from a foot soldier, to a Hollywood crooner, to the incarnation of death, Kjartansson both celebrates and derides the romanticised figure of the artist as cultural hero.

Ragnar Kjartansson said: “I am extremely pleased to have my works in the legendary Barbican. The interdisciplinary buffet that the Barbican is fits my unfocused practice. Seriously I love the building the utopian feel and the programme that has kept me coming and coming as a tourist since my parents took me there in the 80´s.”

Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts said “It is a pleasure to welcome and present Ragnar’s work at the Barbican, an artist who, incredibly, has never had a sizeable show in London or a survey on this scale this side of the Atlantic. After two highly memorable presentations at the Venice Biennale, and a host of new commissions across Europe and the United States, Ragnar is an artist at the forefront of contemporary art and I’m thrilled this show will bring his eclectic practice to a wider audience.’

Music, repetition and endurance are key ingredients in Ragnar Kjartansson’s video and performance works and the exhibition centres around two major works combining these elements. Shown to much acclaim at the New Museum in New York, Ragnar Kjartansson’s autobiographical performance, Take me here by the Dishwasher: Memorial for a Marriage (2014) is presented. Full of romance and humour, 10 male troubadours are spread throughout the lower gallery, singing and strumming their guitars against a projected soft focus love scene acted by Kjartansson’s parents. The actors met on set and family legend has it that Kjartansson was conceived at the time the film was shot in 1975 . In homage to the interweaving of the real and the fictional, Kjartansson invited Kjartan Sveinsson, former member of the Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós to transform the dialogue into a polyphonic score.

Ragnar Kjartansson’s celebrated video installation, The Visitors (2012) is also on show in the lower gallery, comprising of a series of nine life-size video tableaux of a musical performance staged at historic Rokeby Farm in Upstate New York where Ragnar Kjartansson has been a frequent visitor since 2007. Shot in one take, each musician was recorded in a separate room of the home or on the grounds of Rokeby, singing the same refrain ‘once again I fall into my feminine ways’ for just over an hour. The s ynchronisation of the screens in the exhibition space merges the individual interpretations into a cinematic and harmonic composition.

One of the earliest works on show, Me and My Mother , is an ongoing video collaboration with his mother dating from 2000, and features four video screens, filmed over five years apart where she repeatedly spits in his face over several minutes with intensity and vigour at once provocative, humorous and absurd. As well as exploring family relationships and the passage of time, the series also engages us with Kjartansson’s interest in the conflation of reality and fantasy as mother and son slip into their professional roles.

For the first time in the UK, Kjartansson’s series of 144 paintings, The End (2009), made over a 6-month period during the Venice Biennale, are on display. As his native country was in the midst of an unprecedented economic meltdown, Ragnar Kjartansson inhabited the role of a bohemian artist, painting the portrait of the same young model, day after day, drinking and smoking against the backdrop of the Grand Canal. While the project served to document the artist’s own experience, his obsessive repetition of the same subject and maniacal accumulation of paintings hinted at the nihilism of art in the face of the real world. Drawing and painting are an essential part of Kjartansson’s practice and the exhibition also includes a selection of his intimate Moleskin sketchbooks and watercolour paintings for his durational performances.

To coincide with the exhibition, Kjartansson has conceived a new work of a mirrored scene of movement and symmetry entitled Second Movement (2016) for the Barbican Lakeside every Saturday and Sunday. In a theatrical reality, two women in quintessential Edwardian costume row their boat on the Barbican Lakeside embracing in a never-ending kiss. With gentleness and tension and the feeling of Mozart’s famous composition Second Movement of Piano Concerto 21 echoing from the title, the performance is in stark contrast to the Brutalist surrounds of the centre.

Ragnar Kjartansson was born in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1976, where he lives and works. His recent solo exhibitions and performances include, Krieg (War), Volksbühne, Berlin (2016); Ragnar Kjartansson: Woman in E , Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2016); Seul celui qui connaît le désir, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015—16); Me, My Mother, My Father and I, New Museum, New York (2014); The Palace of the Summerland, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2014); The Explosive Sonics of Divinity, Volksbühne, Berlin (2014); The Visitors, Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2012 — 13); Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2013) and HangarBicocca , Milan (2013—14); It’s Not the End of the World, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2012—13); Song, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2011— 2012). Kjartansson performed A Lot of Sorrow, with The National at MoMA P.S.1, New York (2013). Kjartansson was the recipient of Performa’s 2011 Malcolm McLaren Award for his performance of Bliss , a twelve-hour live loop of the final aria of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and in 2009 he was the youngest artist to represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale.

Barbican Art Gallery, London
www.barbican.org.uk

Feminist Avant - Garde of the 1970s @ The Photographers’ Gallery, London

Feminist Avant – Garde of the 1970s
The Photographers’ Gallery, London
7 October 2016 - 8 January 2017

The Photographers’ Gallery presents Feminist Avant – Garde of the 1970s, an expansive exhibition comprising forty-eight international female artists and over 150 major works from the VERBUND COLLECTION in Vienna.

The exhibition highlights groundbreaking practices that shaped the feminist art movement and provides a timely reminder of the wide impact of a seminal generation of artists. Alongside established practitioners such as VALIE EXPORT, Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman and Martha Rosler, the exhibition also provides a rare opportunity to discover the influential work of artists including Katalin Ladik, Nil Yalter, Birgit Jürgenssen and Sanja Iveković.

Focusing on photographs, collage pieces, performances, films and videos produced throughout the 1970s, the exhibition reflects a moment during which emancipation, equality and civil rights protests became part of public discourse. Through radical, poetic, ironic and often provocative investigations, female artists were galvanized to use their work as further means of engagement - questioning feminine identities, gender roles and sexual politics through new modes of expression.

Challenging accepted social conventions including the mechanisms of the art industry, these artists sought to reconfigure, and ultimately reshape, the prevailing iconography of ‘woman’ as the passive muse surrendering herself to the male gaze. Operating across the public and personal realms, as well as using their own bodies as central motifs, artists sought to address broad political issues and confront patriarchy and sexism in art and society. In doing so they created a new, assertive and multifaceted female identity.

The exhibition is organised into four loose themes:

In Domestic Agenda artists challenge the confines of the domestic sphere. In her video work Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), Martha Rosler employs drama and parody to criticize the traditional role of the housewife. Penny Slinger’s humorous photographic series Wedding invitation (Art is just a piece of cake) (1975), depicts the artist dressed as a bride embedded within a wedding cake, theatrically and sarcastically linking the cutting of the wedding cake with the act of the wedding night. In her self-portrait I want out of here (1976) Birgit Jürgenssen expresses the desire to break out of the limiting role of the housewife.

The Seductive Body: Sexuality and Objectification brings together artists that exploit their own bodies as art material. These include Hannah Wilke’s Through the Large Glass (1976), featuring the artist stripping behind Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923); and VALIE EXPORT who presented herself and her body as a desirable and accessible object in Tapp- und Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema) (1968).

Cultural ideals of beauty and body image are examined in In My Skin: Normative Beauty and the Limits of the Body. Change (1974), by Ewa Partum, depicts a split portrait image of the artist in which one half of her face is aged using make-up techniques. In Body Halves (1971), Rita Myers collages together pictures of her body to create the perfect version of herself. Others, like Ana Mendieta or Gina Pane, pushed themselves to the very limits of physical endurance, experimenting with facial and body manipulation and distorting their features through pressing them against sheets of Plexiglas or slicing their skin with razors.

Alter Ego: Masquerade, Parody and Self-Representation groups artists that analyse and deconstruct stereotypical personality manifestations and ‘systems of representation’ through role-playing and costumes. Cindy Sherman, Suzy Lake, Alexis Hunter and Marcella Campagnano cast themselves in a variety of roles for their photographic explorations into visual representations of women in popular media. Other projects include Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Roberta Breitmore (1974-1979) in which the artist assumed an alternative identity playing to American stereotypes of the ideal woman.

Exhibiting 48 artists:

Helena Almeida (b. 1934, Portugal), Eleanor Antin (b. 1935, USA), Anneke Barger, (b. 1939, NL), Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, USA), Judith Bernstein (b. 1942, USA), Renate Bertlmann (b. 1943, Austria), Teresa Burga (b. 1935, Peru), Marcella Campagnano (b. 1941, IT), Judy Chicago (b. 1939, USA), Linda Christanell (b. 1939, Austria), Lili Dujourie (b. 1941, Belgium), Mary Beth Edelson (b. 1933, USA), Renate Eisenegger (b. 1949, Germany), VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940, Austria), Esther Ferrer (b. 1937, Estland), Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941, USA), Alexis Hunter (1948-2014, USA), Sanja Iveković (b. 1949, Croatia), Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003, Austria), Kirsten Justesen (b. 1943, Denmark), Ketty La Rocca (1938-1976, Italy), Leslie Labowitz (b. 1946, USA), Katalin Ladik (b. 1942, Serbia), Brigitte Lang (b. 1953, Austria), Suzanne Lacy (b. 1945, USA), Suzy Lake (b. 1947, USA), Karin Mack (b. 1940, Austria), Ana Mendieta (1948-1985, Cuba/USA), Rita Myers (b. 1947,USA), Lorraine O'Grady (b. 1934, USA), ORLAN (b. 1944, France), Gina Pane (1939-1990, France), Letítia Parente (1930-1991, Brazil), Ewa Partum (b. 1945, Poland), Friederike Pezold (b. 1945, Austria), Margot Pilz (b. 1936, The Netherlands) , Ulrike Rosenbach (b. 1943, Germany), Martha Rosler (b. 1943, USA), Suzanne Santoro (b. 1946, USA), Carolee Schneemann (b. 1939, USA), Lydia Schouten (b. 1955, The Netherlands), Cindy Sherman (b. 1954, USA), Penny Slinger (b. 1947, UK), Annegret Soltau (b. 1946, Germany), Hannah Wilke (1940-1993, USA), Martha Wilson (b. 1947, USA), Francesca Woodman (1958-1981, USA), Nil Yalter (b. 1938, Turkey).

Feminist Avant – Garde of the 1970s is co-curated by Gabriele Schor, VERBUND COLLECTION, and Anna Dannemann, The Photographers’ Gallery.

The Photographers' Gallery
16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Taguchui Yukihiro - 2011 MAM Project - Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

MAM Project 014: Taguchui Yukihiro 
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
18 March - 3 July, 2011

The Berlin-based artist TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO (born 1980, Osaka, Japan) has garnered much attention in recent years for his unique PERFORMATIVE INSTALLATIONS, which combine elements of drawing, performance, animation and installation. Taguchi Yukihiro's humorous and quick-paced artworks are made using the oldest form of animation, stop motion, and while they appear to be the result of chance, they have in fact been carefully planned and are closely controlled. Just as the word “animation” has its origins in the Latin word “anima,” meaning spirit or soul Taguchi Yukihiro’s artistic creation appears to imbue everyday objects, such as furniture and even the foorboards in his studio, with spirits of their own.

TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO 

Moment-performative spazierens, 2008  

Kreuzberg, Berlin 

Photos: (c) Taguchi Yukihiro 

TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO

 TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO, Installation, taking foor out 

Waldemerstrasse, Berlin at Galereie air garten

TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO

 TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO, Installation, coming out of the window 

Waldemerstrasse, Berlin at Galereie air garten

TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO

 TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO, Installation, extended benches 

Oranienplatz, Berlin

TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO

TAGUCHUI YUKIHIRO, Event, picnic/barbeque 

Mariannenplatz, Berlin

At MAM Project 014, the white walls of the Mori Art Museum galleries will make their way out into Roppongi Hills and beyond. The work, which also brings life to the city's void spaces, will be shown in a constant state of progress. The white walls, which in the video will be seen frolicking through the town, will continue to undergo changes within the MAM Project gallery, too. Just like we ourselves never experience two days that are exactly the same, the gallery walls will also change from day to day. Life itself is a succession of moments, and Taguchi Yukihiro’s works tell us how to animate each of them to the full. 

Curated by KATAOKA MAMI, Chief Curator at the Mori Art Museum

MORI ART MUSEUM 
53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower
6-10-1 Roppongi
Minato-ku
TOKYO - JAPAN　

www.mori.art.museum

Cinema Arts Festival Houston 2010

Cinema Arts Festival Houston 2010

November 10 - 14, 2010

Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) is a non-profit organization created in 2008. With the support of former Houston Mayor Bill White and the leadership of Franci Crane, HCAS organized and hosted the 2009 Cinema Arts Festival Houston. The festival celebrates the vitality and diversity of the arts in Houston and showcased the international city that Houston is with a total of over 6000 people who attended 34 events and screenings of films and new media by and about artists working in the visual, performing and literary arts. Following the  success of the inaugural festival, the second annual Cinema Arts Festival Houston will be presented November 10-14, 2010. 

HCAS is funded in part by grants from the Crane Foundation, The Brown Foundation, Inc., Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, City of Houston Convention and Entertainment Facilities Department, Houston Arts Alliance, Houston Film Commission and Texas Film Commission.

Among the 2010 film selections is director Mark Landsmanʼs documentary Thender Soul, which earned the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2010. Thunder Soul also took home audience awards at SXSW in Austin, the Dallas International Film Festival, and the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto.

Landsmanʼs film is a reverent homage to Houston native and Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame  inductee Conrad O. “Prof” Johnson and his work with Kashmere High Schoolʼs Kashmere Stage Band during the late 1960ʼs and 70ʼs. Thunder Soul recounts the Kashmere Stage Bandʼs remarkable run for a national title in 1972 along with the events leading up to a reunion performance in February 2008 when 30 original members (now in their mid-fifties) performed a tribute concert in honor of Mr. Johnson, who was 92 at the time. The Kashmere Reunion Band will perform live following the free screening of Thunder Soul at Discovery Green during the 2010 Cinema Arts Festival Houston.

“My fatherʼs legacy is the continued education of Houston-area youths, and this film shows how that can be achieved,” says Prof Johnsonʼs son, Conrad O. Johnson, Jr. “Mark really knows the mechanics of documentary storytelling and knows how to fit together this type of film. My father never got a chance to see the final product, but I do believe he would have been proud of Markʼs work. I hope weʼre able to get more documentaries such as this one exposed to the people of Houston, not only because its about Houston, but also because its about the power of achievement.”

For the second consecutive year, nationally recognized film programmer Richard Herskowitz will serve as the festivalʼs artistic director. In addition to his work as director of the Virginia Film Festival  –  one of two regional festivals to be awarded multi-year support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  –  from 1994  through 2008, Herskowitz also helmed Cornell Cinema, the media arts center at Cornell University, for twelve years. While with Cornell Cinema, he served as adjunct curator for film and video at  the universityʼs Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. He currently teaches Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon.

 
“Houston is fortunate, indeed, to have the talented visionary Richard Herskowitz returning as the artistic director of Cinema Arts Houston 2010,” says HCAS Board Chair Franci Crane. “Just like last November, Richard will bring Houston a sizzling film and media arts festival, one for which all Houstonians will be grateful.”

Also scheduled to be shown are:

Waste Land (2010): This Sundance Audience Award-Winning documentary follows artist Vik Muniz as he collaborates with catadores (pickers of recyclable material) in the worldʼs largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro to create internationally recognized art.

Ride, Rise, Roar (2010): A feature-length documentary profiling Talking Heads lead singer David Byrne and his collaboration with choreographers and dancers on his recent concert tour. The film was screened to great acclaim this year at SXSW.

The Woman with Five Elephants (2009): Winner of the Sterling World Feature Award at the 2010 AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival, this documentary follows the twilight years of renowned translator Svetlana Geier and her meticulous process of translating the five great novels of Dostoyevsky from Russian into German. 

The New Rijksmuseum (2008): Winner of the Jury Award at the 2010 International Festival of Films on Art (Montreal), the documentary chronicles the renovation of the world-famous Amsterdam art museum through the eyes of several colorful characters including the flamboyant museum director and the beleaguered Spanish architecture team.

The Woodmans (2010): The documentary which debuted to rave reviews at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival is the story of a family of artists scarred by the tragic death of daughter Francesca, one the late 20th Centuryʼs most recognized photographers.

Isabella Rossellini will participate in “An Evening with Isabella Rossellini” at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston at 7:00 PM on Friday, November 12, during the 2010 Cinema Arts Festival Houston. At the event, Rossellini will receive the Cinema Arts Festival's first Levantine Cinema Arts Award.  Additionally, she will present highlights from her Sundance Channel series Green Porno (2008-2009) and  Seduce Me  (2010), along with an intimate portrait of her life and history called Isabella Rossellini - My Wild Life (2010). 

Green Porno and Seduce Me are short, funny and irreverent films exploring mating and attraction among animals. Conceived as a cross-platform project with Sundance, Green Porno netted  the 2009 Webby Awards for Online Film and Video Best Individual Performance (Isabella Rossellini) and Experimental (Green Porno). To date, the short film series has appeared on the Sundance Channelʼs website, its television broadcast network, and in a book / DVD combo (HarperStudio, 2009).

The Levantine Cinema Arts Award honors a leading actor, director, or other creative artist who has stretched the boundaries of cinematic expression throughout an illustrious film career. The award is sponsored by Levantine Entertainment, a new motion picture development, financing and production company aiming to provide U.S. and worldwide audiences with high quality, socially conscious, and character-driven films.

Jamal Daniel, owner of Levantine Entertainment and a board member of the Houston Cinema Arts Society, comments: "Isabella Rossellini is not only a beautiful embodiment of the union of parentsʼ Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, she has also in her own right contributed landmark moments to the world of cinema, whether as an actress under the direction of the greats, David Lynch and Guy Maddin, or as a director of entertaining innovative and educational films.  Isabella Rossellini is an ideal and inspiring recipient of the inaugural Levantine Cinema Arts Award.”

On November 11 at 8:00 PM, Rossellini will help launch the Festival's 40th anniversary tribute to the Rice Media  Center. Her father, the legendary Italian director Roberto Rossellini, worked with Dominique and John de Menil to establish the Rice Media Center in its early years. Rossellini will introduce  Journey to Italy  (Viaggio in Italia) in the Rice Cinema. The 1954 masterpiece about a married couple headed for divorce was directed by her father and stars her mother, Academy, Emmy and Tony award-winning actress Ingrid Bergman.  Also on the program will be Isabella Rossellini's own film tribute to Roberto Rossellini, My Father is 100 Years Old,  and a rare interview with the de Menils conducted by her father.

The tribute to the Rice Media Center exemplifies a major theme of the 2010 Cinema Arts Festival Houston. According to Richard Herskowitz, "The enormous value of arts education programs in schools and universities, which John and Dominique de Menil believed in passionately and supported through their founding of the Rice Media Center, is powerfully conveyed in several of our film selections."  The life-changing value of the musical education  and  self-esteem  students  gained from  joining Houston's Kashmere High School band is the message of  Thunder Soul.

Other films about arts education also scheduled are:

Chekov for Children (2010): This documentary film from director Sasha Waters Fryer premiered as an Official Selection at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival. It follows Phillip Lopate's teaching experience in 1970ʼs New York City. Lopate is one of Americaʼs greatest film critics and essayists, taught at the University of Houston during the 1980ʼs and started the Writers in the Schools Program. Both Lopate and Fryer will be in attendance.

Louder Than a Bomb (2010): From co-directors Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs, this documentary chronicles the stereotype-confounding stories of four slam poetry teams as they prepare for and compete in Chicago's Louder Than a Bomb Festival – the largest youth poetry slam competition in the world. The film has won Audience Awards at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Woods Hole Film Festival, where it also received the Jury Prize for Best Documentary. Five student poets from the film will perform live at the November 11 Thunder Soul event at Discovery Green. Co-Director Jon Siskel will also be on hand.

Academy Award-winning actress Shirley MacLaine will attend a screening of Terms of Endearment (1983) at 7:00 PM, Saturday November 13, 2010 at  the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. During the special event, MacLaine will be presented with the 2010 Texas Film Award, which honors a classic film made in Texas or an artist who has made significant contributions to film in the Lone Star State. Following the screening, Ms. MacLaine will engage in a conversation with Houston-based Variety film critic Joe Leydon about Terms of Endearment and her extraordinary career.

Shirley MacLaine created the unforgettable character of Aurora Greenway in James L. Brooksʼ classic romantic comedy drama, which earned her the Best Actress Oscar. Terms of Endearment – produced, directed and written for the screen by Brooks – features scenes shot in and around Houstonʼs River Oaks and The Heights neighborhoods, and famously, Brennanʼs restaurant. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Direction and Best Actress for MacLaine, and four Golden Globes. 

Other films – new and classic – will join Terms of Endearment in celebrating the great and growing tradition of film in Texas.  

This State Iʼm In (1990): 20th Anniversary Presentation: The initial grant funding for the project was to create a trailer for a film that would never be made. Encouraged by the outstanding performances of a number of characters from the Houston, Texas art scene, lens-based artist Robert Ziebell expanded his initial concept into a feature film. In addition to its Wizard of Oz-inspired narrative, the movie documented Ziebellʼs first impressions and actual experiences in Texas since relocating to Houston for the Museum of Fine Artsʼ newly established Core Artist-in-Residence program. It features performances by noted Texas art personalities such as the late Curator and Menil Founding Director Walter Hopps; Museum of Fine Arts Houston Contemporary Art Curator Alison de Lima Greene; MFAH Film Curator Marian Luntz and Houston arts patron and socialite Carolyn Farb. Houston arts leaders, including Fredericka Hunter of the Texas Gallery, will join Ziebell for a post-screening discussion. Also, Ziebell will participate in a panel discussion in the festival's "Meet the Makers" series on low-budget feature filmmaking from twenty years ago to the digital productions of today.

The Texas Filmmakers Showcase is a special screening event consisting of the best of Texas short films and videos under 40 minutes in length. Each year, the program is presented to studio executives, agents and producers in the Hollywood film community, with subsequent screenings around Texas throughout the rest of the year. The Showcase is presented by the Houston Film Commission with the generous support of additional sponsors.

Texas Film at the Visitors Center: Cinema Arts Festival Houston will introduce this new series of programs highlighting new and upcoming arts films by Texas filmmakers at the Visitors Center located in City Hall. All programs are free to the public. Included in the multi-part series is First Look: Houston Arts Films in Progress, a series of  excerpts from three Houston-based films currently in production:  Jenalia Moreno's  Stitched is  a documentary that gives viewers a glimpse at the life of competitive quilters; Ford Gunter and Carlton Ahrens' Art Car follows a handful of local artists as they prepare their entries for the 2010 Houston Art Car Parade; and Alex Luster's Stick 'Em Up  takes an in depth look into the overshadowed world of wheat pasting in Houston. Also in this series will be artist portraits by Mark and Angela Walley, Painting Poetry by Earl Latchley, and "Pixel Painting" by Johnny DeKam, with the filmmakers present.

With Isabella Rossellini and Shirley MacLaine, American writer, director, and actor John Turturro will attend the 2010 Cinema Arts Houston. Also confirmed to attend are Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, celebrated American animator Bill Plympton, and Houstonʼs own world-famous rodeo hotshot  Clint Cannon, subject of two films from French filmmaker Frédéric Laffont.

Turturroʼs latest creation, Passione (2010), will kick off the festival on Wednesday, November 10 at a red carpet screening to be held at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston at 7:00 PM. Passione, which made its debut at the Venice Film Festival in September, is a “musical adventure” directed, co-written, and narrated by Turturro that takes viewers on a journey through Naples and its musical history with over 25 cinematic renderings of songs dating from the thirteenth century to the present.

On Thursday, November 11 at 4:00 PM at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Turturro will present Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy (2010), which he co-wrote with director and noted puppeteer Roman Paska. Also appearing on camera, Turturro takes audiences on an intimate journey through his ancestral homeland, where he is researching a prospective film to be set in the world of the island's unique puppet theater.

Although best known to mainstream audiences for his portrayal of Agent Seymour Simmons in Michael Bayʼs blockbuster Transformers franchise, in over 30 years in the business, Turturro has appeared in more than 60 films, establishing himself as one of the most skilled and dynamic actors in the industry.  Among his most memorable are roles in Spike Leeʼs Do the Right Thing (1989), Robert Redfordʼs Quiz Show (1994), and the Coen Brothersʼ Barton Fink (1991), The Big Lebowski (1998), and O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000).

In addition to John Turturro, the 2010 Cinema Arts Festival Houston will host a number of additional film heavyweights. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney will present My Trip To Al Qaeda (2010) at 6:45 PM on Saturday, November 13 at Edwards Greenway Stadium Palace 24. The film explores 9/11 and the Iraq War, also the subjects of Gibneyʼs Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side (2007). The film is a cinematic adaptation of journalist and  author Lawrence Wrightʼs  one-man show about Americaʼs vexed  relationship with the Middle East. Wright will join Gibney to present My Trip To Al Qaeda. Gibney will also screen his current project, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010) at 1:00 PM on Sunday, November 14 at Edwards. The film is an in-depth look at the meteoric rise and scandalous fall of former, disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

Groundbreaking American animator Bill Plympton will present his newest project, Idiots and Angels (2008), a darkly comic tale of Angel, a misanthrope in a battle for his soul, at Edwards Greenway Grand Palace Stadium 24 on Friday, November 12 at 9:45pm. Plympton, best known for his Academy Award-nominated animated shorts Your Face (1987) and Guard Dog (2005), will also conduct a master class for fans and aspiring animators  on Friday, November 12 at 1pm  and introduce the short animated and experimental films he has curated for Independent Exposure 2010 at 1pm on Saturday November 13 at Edwards.

Accomplished French filmmaker Frédéric Laffont will present Ballad for a Cowboy (Ballade pour un Cow-boy) – his portrait of rodeo sensation Clint Cannon produced for French television in 2006 – on Saturday November 13 at 9:45 PM at Edwards Greenway Grand Palace Stadium 24. The film depicts a charismatic hero following in the footsteps of his father, Jay, who competed in rodeo for 20 years. Cannonʼs dream is to gain enough points to reach the finals in Houston and, ultimately, win the national championship. Frédéric Laffont is completing a new project featuring Cannon titled Cowboy Solitude, a section of which will be screened after Ballad for a Cowboy. The film blends documentary and fiction, and takes off from an imagined Dictaphone recording by Clint to his father, questioning his choice to give up the rodeo. Both Cannon and Laffont will be on hand.

2010 CINEMA ARTS FESTIVAL HOUSTON, TEXAS

http://cinemaarts.bside.com