[Frameworks] ** Art House Convergence Currently Accepting Proposals for 2020 Conference **

[Alison Kozberg]

Calling all film exhibitors, distributors, vendors, and enthusiasts — Art
House Convergence <https://www.arthouseconvergence.org/>, a North American
associated dedicated to advancing excellence in media exhibition, is
currently accepting proposals for panels, workshops, networking sessions,
and other programming for its 2020 Annual Conference *January 19 –23, 2020 *in
Midway, Utah.  *Submit your ideas here by August 13
<https://www.arthouseconvergence.org/index.php/2020-call-for-proposals/>*.
We are also accepting scholarship
<https://www.arthouseconvergence.org/index.php/2020-emerging-leadership-initiative-and-scholarships/>
 and volunteer
<https://www.arthouseconvergence.org/index.php/get-involved-with-art-house-convergence/>
 applications.

*The Conference *

As the largest annual gathering of art house cinema and festival
professionals, AHC's annual conference attracts participants from across
the world. By defining our field, creating a shared vision and vocabulary,
and identifying best practices, the Art House Convergence Annual Conference
strengthens efforts to sustain art houses cinemas and film festivals of
various sizes, operating structures, and programming philosophies. Our goal
is to engage art house theaters, film festivals, film societies, museums,
and other exhibition-oriented organizations in conversations of great
relevance to our field.

*2020 Conference Goals *

Each year Co-Chairs for the Art House Convergence Annual Conference
consider the tremendous challenges and opportunities facing the field of
exhibition. In advance of the 2020 Conference, Co-Chairs Miriam Bale (Indie
Memphis) and Michael Orange (MATATU Nomadic Cinema) have identified key
topics that inspire an ambitious and innovative consideration of how we can
serve our communities, challenge ourselves, and reach beyond our status quo
to imagine new creative and collaborative possibilities for the theatrical
experience.

I. Accountability and Responsibility
As an international alliance of cinemas and film festivals, we recognize
our role as curators of the public imagination and work to sustain the art
house as a thinking space and sanctuary for documentation and
representation of the human experience. We acknowledge our power as
exhibitors and commit to leaning beyond conventional models towards a more
equitable framework in operations, programming, leadership, and
representation.

II. Politics of Aesthetics
There has been a recent tendency to split film appreciation and
interpretation into aesthetic OR political camps. It’s important to
emphasize that all art is political. Every visual, narrative, and
technological choice is political. Coming together to watch and discuss
films is political, and the choices of who guides those discussions and how
are also political. It’s important to move beyond calls for representation
and towards aesthetic analysis of every choice (even, or especially, the
choices to be “anti-political” or to replicate dominant and usual forms
without interrogation).

 III. Place & Proximity
What role do our physical locations play in our institutional identities?
How are our decisions, both on and off the screen, influenced and informed
by the public? How may we better recognize our economic, social, and
cultural impact? As place-based organizations, we have a tremendous
responsibility to the people who entrust us with their stories and spaces.
How may we ensure that a plurality of perspectives inform our
community-based work, moving beyond transactional relationships towards
equitable partnerships?

IV. Sustainability
There is an urgent need to make sure our environments are sustainable:
ecologically, financially, and culturally.  How are we dealing with
changing marketplaces and new ways of promotion and communication? What
small and big daily choices are we making to create less waste and damage?
Our lived, shared cultural experiences more sustainable than individual
cultural consumption? If our organization wants to widen its cultural
reach, how does our own workplace reflect that desired outcome? Can we
change that workplace by hiring new people and forming new partnerships? If
so, are those relationships and new hires sustainable?

 V. Radical Imagination
Change requires imagination. As film professionals we are in a privileged
position to be daily inspired by the art of the cinema: past, present and
future. In honor of this chosen field, we commit to pursuing creative
decision making.

-- 
Alison Kozberg
akozquez at gmail.com
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