Owned: A Tale of Two Americas movie screening – Houston Cinema Arts Festival

Rice Media Center Rice University Entrance #8 University and Stockton, Houston

The United States’ postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class. It also set America on two divergent paths—one of imagined wealth, propped up by speculations and endless booms and busts, and the other in systematically defunded, segregated communities, where “the American dream” feels hopelessly out of reach. Some ten years after the last housing collapse and well into a perceived upswing, the election of Donald Trump and urban uprisings in places like Baltimore suggest that there’s a far more fundamental problem with housing policy in America. And we haven’t even begun to ‘recover.’This documentary is a fever dream vision into the dark history behind the US housing economy. Tracking its overtly racist beginnings to its unbridled commoditization, the film exposes a foundational story few Americans understand as their own.

$12.00

This Changes Everything movie screening – Houston Cinema Arts Film Festival

Rice Media Center Rice University Entrance #8 University and Stockton, Houston

In this timely follow-up to his documentary Casting By (HCAF 2012), Tom Donahue explores the insidious and systematic sexism in Hollywood through the voices of leading actors and directors, including Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, Sandra Oh, Jessica Chastain, Shonda Rhimes, Reese Witherspoon and many other ambassadors of the #TimesUp movement. Filmmaker Maria Geise will be in attendance.

$12.00

Invisible City movie screening – Houston Cinema Arts Society

Rice Media Center Rice University Entrance #8 University and Stockton, Houston

Arguably, James Blue’s most ambitious project, this complex documentary was originally made in five one-hour episodes as an interactive public television series. The sixth episode, which summarized the series, will be screened. Blue and renowned architect Adele Santos take us on a tour of 1970s Houston, a divided city, growing in the midst of an oil boom. Skyscrapers going up, unemployment going down. One thousand new residents were arriving per week. But the filmmakers see two cities. Visible Houston is populated by well-educated citizens earning high wages with no state or income taxes. Invisible Houston, for whom the most basic city services did not exist, was inhabited by poorly educated citizens earning low wages. Blue was founder of Rice University Media Center and a leader in the movement to democratize media access and production across America, including Houston’s Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP), a media arts organization founded in 1977. 

$12.00

Traffic Stop: A Routine Encounter Takes a Bad Turn

The Hobby School Civitas Project presents this award-winning HBO Documentary on the story of Breaion King, a 26 year-old African-American school teacher from Austin, who is stopped for a routine traffic violation that escalates into a dramatic arrest.

Free

Screening of “Nefarious: Merchant of Souls”

Dominican Center for Spirituality 6501 Almeda Rd, Houston

This documentary exposes the disturbing trends in modern day sex slavery.  With footage shot in over nineteen different countries, it tells stories through the eyes of both the enslaved and their traffickers.  A q&a on Human Trafficking will follow the screening.

Free
Event Series Wild & Scenic Film Festival

Wild & Scenic Film Festival

River Oaks Theatre 2009 West Gray, Houston

Join the Citizens Environmental Coalition (CEC) for two nights of environmental inspiration as we host the fifth Houston screening of the Wild & Scenic Film Festival on Tour!

A selection of films from the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, North America’s largest environmental film festival, will bring two hours of beautiful, educational, and inspiring films to the big screen at River Oaks Theatre on January 30 & 31, 2019, from 7:00 – 9:00 pm each night.

$15

Undeterred: Community Resistance on the US/Mexico Border (film showing & meet-n-greet w/filmmaker)

Dominican Center for Spirituality 6501 Almeda Rd, Houston

Undeterred is a documentary about community resistance in the rural border town of Arivaca, Arizona. Since NAFTA, 9/11 and the Obama and Trump administrations border residents have been on the front-lines of the humanitarian crisis caused by increased border enforcement build up. Undeterred is an intimate and unique portrait of how residents in a small rural community, caught in the cross-hairs of global geo-political forces, have mobilized to demand our rights and to provide aid to injured, oft times dying people funneled across a wilderness desert. The film was made by Eva Lewis, a resident of Arivaca and long time member of People Helping People in the Border Zone (PHP). Undeterred was created in close collaboration with the Arivaca community and members of PHP.   Eva Lewis and other town members will be here to discuss the film.

Donation: no one turned away

Mother’s Day: The Forgotten Victims of Death Row

Rice Media Center Rice University Entrance #8 University and Stockton, Houston

Between 1976 and 2016, the U.S. executed more than 1,400 people. The mothers of many of the condemned men and women testified at trial, pleading for the lives of their children. The intense grief these women feel is unacknowledged by society. Each of these mothers has a story to tell. This film presents just a few.

Free

FREE Houston showing and Q&A on Restorative Justice film called “Circles”

The University of Houston Downtown, Center for Critical Race Studies

Circles, an award-winning documentary will be shown together with Q&A with Eric Butler, featured in film.  Donations will be welcome and will go to the film creator and distributor and an honorarium to Eric Butler.

Free

World Refugee Day: Presenting “When We Were Strangers”

14 Pews Arts Theater 800 Aurora, Houston

In celebration of World Refugee Day, Independent Writer, Kimberly Meyer is coupling a film screening of Soufra with the launching of her project "When We Were Strangers" – following the lives of nine single mother refugees in Houston, which has been funded in part by a grant from Houston Arts Alliance.

$25

Free film screening: The Chocolate Case

Houston Mennonite Church 1231 Wirt Rd., Houston, TX, United States

Come for the film, enjoy the treats and even shop the #FairTrade store for gifts or yourself. Every purchase matters and this is your chance to be a part of the movement to put people and the planet first.

The film follows 3 Dutch journalists who uncover child labor in the cocoa production chain, which triggers them to try to persuade large corporations to end unethical practices. The trio sets out on a mission to develop the first ‘slave-free’ chocolate bar, known as ‘Tony’s Chocolonely’ – now one of Holland’s leading chocolate brands. The film is both an expose of problems within the chocolate supply chain, and an inspirational story of people trying to change the world they live in.

Free

Event Series Film Screening: Babylon

Film Screening: Babylon

Brown Auditorium Theater 1001 Bissonnet, Houston

The incendiary Babylon has been finally released in the U.S., playing to packed screenings and hailed as a true discovery. Raw and smoldering, it follows a dancehall DJ (Brinsley Forde, front man of the British reggae group Aswad) in South London as he pursues his musical ambitions, battling against the racism and xenophobia of employers, neighbors, and police. The blistering soundtrack features Aswad, Johnny Clarke, Dennis Bovell, and more.

$7 – $65

The Silence of Others (El silencio de otros)

Brown Auditorium Theater 1001 Bissonnet, Houston

Filmed over six years, The Silence of Others reveals the epic struggle of victims from Spain’s dictatorship (1939-1975) under General Francisco Franco. A powerful and poetic cautionary tale about fascism, and the dangers of forgetting the past, the award-winning documentary offers a cinematic portrait of the first attempt in history to prosecute crimes of Franco whose perpetrators have enjoyed impunity for decades due to a 1977 amnesty law. Executive produced by Pedro Almodóvar, the film brings to light a painful past that Spain is reluctant to face, even today, decades after the dictator’s death.

$7 – $65

Climate Movie Evening: Paris to Pittsburgh

Live Oak Friends Meeting House 1318 W. 26th, Houston, TX, United States

Paris to Pittsburgh brings to life the impassioned efforts of individuals who are battling the most severe threats of climate change in their own backyards. Set against the national debate over the United States’ energy future – and the Trump administration’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement – the film captures what’s at stake for communities around the country – and the inspiring ways Americans are responding. The film is directed by Sidney Beaumont and Mike Bonfiglio, produced by Bloomberg Philanthropies and RadicalMedia and distributed by National Geographic Documentary Films.

Free

Paris to Pittsburgh Documentary Screening

Grace United Church of Christ 8515 Brookwulf, Houston

Paris to Pittsburgh brings to life the impassioned efforts of individuals who are battling the most severe threats of climate change in their own backyards.

Set against the national debate over the United States' energy future - and the Trump administration's explosive decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement - the film captures what's at stake for communities around the country and the inspiring ways Americans are responding.

Free

FILM: A Better World IS Possible

Community House at St. Stephens Episcopal Church 1755 Sul Ross, Houston, TX, United States

Exciting and very focused one-hour film that lays out a history of American policies. The idea to offer a deeper understanding of what the Trump/Pence White House plan actually is and how this plan is being executed to detail. It is a must-see!

$5.00

Opening Night Screening and Reception for Anand Patwardhan: Ways of Struggle

Glassell School of Art, Favrot Auditorium 5101 Montrose Blvd., Houston

A new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Glassell School of Art, Anand Patwardhan: Ways of Struggle, surveys four decades of filmmaking by one of today's most socially committed documentary filmmakers. Since the 1970s, Patwardhan has been making portraits of Indian movements for social justice.

Free