Houston Cinema Arts Festival puts city’s creative diversity and rising global status on display

Houston is home to a thriving film scene, and one festival going on right now helps to celebrate it.

Katie Creeggan-Ríos is executive director of the Houston Cinema Arts Society, which is in the midst of celebrating the 17th annual Houston Cinema Arts Festival. The event showcases films all around the city of Houston and celebrates Houston arts.

Creeggan-Ríos joined the Standard with a preview of what attendees can expect. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: Tell us a little bit more about cinema in Houston right now. When you think of those who are really making waves, who are the names that come to mind?

Katie Creeggan-Ríos: Houston, it’s never been a better time to be a filmmaker than it is right now in Houston.

We have an amazing film that we’re showcasing during the festival called “Charliebird.” Samantha Smart is a brilliant actor who’s from League City and she wrote the film as well. So we’re incredibly excited to amplify her career as a Houstonian.

I’m also very excited for Nell Teare, who’s an amazing filmmaker from here. We have some fantastic emerging talent, passionate about shooting their movies at home.

We have two short film competitions. One is called Borders | No Borders, and this is regional filmmakers, emerging filmmakers from Texas and the Gulf Coast, Southwest and Latin America. We have finalists in both narrative and documentary categories that receive cash prizes.

We also have a short film competition called CineSpace. This is in partnership with NASA, so all the films have to utilize at least 10% footage from the International Space Station. We have finalists from Hong Kong, Singapore, Italy, and also here in Houston.

And filmmaker Richard Linklater picks the winning films. Hometown hero, Linklater picks arts-and-space-based winners, and they also receive cash prizes.

Is Linklater, does he work closely with what this festival does?

He’s a huge friend of the festival. He’s always been a big supporter of the Houston Cinema Arts Society and he loves judging CineSpace.

I have to ask something because I know that, at least politically speaking, Texas film was very much on the minds of Texas lawmakers this year. And you know what I’m talking about.

I’m wondering if you have a sense that Texas, by extension, is growing or is somewhat stagnant when it comes to films and film production right now.

Filmmaking and film production is growing in Texas in a way like I’ve never seen before. Here in Houston, we see it — we have more feature films in development here and more short films in development than I’ve ever seen. We have folks trying to come from all over the country and location scout here.

That SB 22, the incentive program that just passed, has been really beneficial for us here in Houston, and I know my friends in Dallas are benefiting as well. It’s an amazing time to be a filmmaker in Texas.

Let me ask what makes the Houston Cinema Arts Festival so unique, because, of course, we’ve seen a proliferation in recent years of film festivals, and I’m wondering what the signature of the Houston Festival is.

You know, Houston is an amazing city and our diversity is our superpower. We have more languages spoken here than any other city in the country. We have refugees being resettled here than any other city in the country, and there are stories being told in Houston that aren’t being told anywhere else in the world.

Forbes called us the city of the future last year, and we really embraced that in the way that we program this festival. There’s something for everyone. You can see any kind of story being told from any perspective.

We also lean on Houston’s amazing fine arts culture. We have photography exhibits as part of the film festival and live music performances, dance performances, concerts, artist talks, workshops, retrospectives. We really give something for everyone and tell every story being told in Texas.

Katie, would you mind if I ask you a personal question? Why did you get involved in the Houston Cinema Arts Society to begin with? What was the draw for you to this kind of event and this kind of work?

Yeah, I am from Houston and I got both my BFA and my master’s at the University of Houston. I love this city so much and I love the arts here — film, but integrated and visual art, performing art as well.

And when I was working on my Bachelor of Fine Arts many, many years ago, we were all told that if you wanted to have a serious career in the arts, you needed to leave Houston — that it wasn’t a city that nurtured arts professionals. And I just didn’t think that was true. I didn’t think that that was the case.

And I’ve been honored in my career to work for organizations that are making a difference and changing the way that people view our arts and our film scene here in Houston.

So being at the helm of the Houston Cinema Arts Society and creating opportunities for emerging, brilliant artists that are from Houston to tell their stories and change the way that people think about Houston on a national scale has been my life’s mission. I’m so proud of the work we’ve done with the festival.

Houston Cinema Arts Festival has been a financial supporter of Texas Standard, but that did not influence any decision on coverage.

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