On June 10th, from 9pm until midnight, internationally-acclaimed films by Andy Warhol, James Benning, and Peter Hutton will travel along the Buffalo Bayou on The Floating Cinema to celebrate the opening of the new Sabine-to-Bagby Park in downtown Houston. Transforming a 20-foot barge with a large outdoor screen, The Floating Cinema will be broadly visible to pedestrians, bicyclists, and visitors to the park. Chosen for their resonance with the Buffalo Bayou waterfront, each film is a vivid portrayal the natural world in transition. The Floating Cinema will be presented by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership in collaboration with Minetta Brook and Aurora Picture Show. The Program for The Floating Cinema is curated by Andrea Grover, Director of Aurora Picture Show and Diane Shamash, Director of Minetta Brook.

Where: Sabine-to-Bagby Promenade, Buffalo Bayou Walk. The festivities will stretch along the banks of Buffalo Bayou from Sabine to I-45, between Allen Parkway and Memorial Drive.

Parking: Parking is available at City Lot H (next to Fonde Recreational Center at Sabine Street and Memorial Drive) and Lot C (Memorial Drive and Houston Street) and at the Hobby Center for Performing Arts at Bagby and Walker.

About the films

Andy Warhol, Sunset (1967) color, sound, 33 minutes. Soundtrack by Nico.


In 1967, Warhol was commissioned by the Texas art patrons Jean and Dominique de Menil to produce a series of religious films of sunsets for a chapel at the 1968 San Antonio Hemisfair. Although this project was never completed to Warhol's satisfaction, this particular sunset film was shown publicly as one of the reels of ****(Four Stars) in December 1967. The film is "both beautiful and mesmerizing and reminiscent of Warhol’s earlier works such as Empire (1964) where a static camera captures a self-contained event and bears a marked resemblance to the paintings of Mark Rothko… a resemblance which I would guess was probably deliberate, since Warhol would certainly have been aware of the Rothko Chapel project and the de Menils’ sponsorship of it in 1967." (Callie Angell, Rice University lecture, 2000)

James Benning, Ten Skies (2002) black and white, 101 minutes.

Ten Skies is a series of ten ten-minute frames of the sky in Southern California. Each shot depicts a variety of skies, at once subtle and dramatic. “One of this unique filmmaker's great works, and one of his most minimalist: ten shots of the sky, each lasting ten minutes. But the experience of watching and hearing it is fabulously rich and intense. The skyscapes are filled with life and change at the speed of light. The soundtrack creates an equally rich narrative space by way of ten short stories that are 'insinuated' without ever being 'explained.' A masterpiece.” (Alexander Horwath, Film Comment, January/February 2005)

Peter Hutton, Two Rivers (2003) color, 35 minutes.

Inspired by the third voyage of Henry Hudson in his failed quest to discover the trade route to the Great China Sea in 1609, Peter Hutton filmed natural and industrial landscapes of the Hudson River in New York and the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River in China to create a work that reflects upon the changing nature of water and landscape. "Mr. Hutton shifts from New York to China, a dramatic rupture marked not only by the change from the familiar wooded palisades to majestic, sharp-shouldered, deeply cleft mountains, but also by a change in color." (Nancy Princenthal, The New York Times, 5/11/03)