As the largest annual gathering of art house cinema and festival professionals, community leaders, service providers and suppliers, the 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. The goal of the Annual Conference is to engage art house theaters, film festivals, film societies, museums, and other exhibition-oriented organizations in conversations of great relevance to our field.

Each year the Annual Conference hosts over 40+ educational sessions featuring conversations and presentations by leaders in cinema exhibition. Interested in presenting a panel, workshop, or networking session? Proposals for the Conference sessions, Art House Tales, and Trailer Wars are currently open. Proposals are due by August 21, 2019.

Register for the 2020 conference and get access to four days of educational sessions, receptions, and networking opportunities. Your registration includes 40+ educational sessions, keynotes, parties, screenings, and more. Register here.

Partner with Art House Convergence and connect with thousands of specialists in the art house and independent cinema industries. Supporting AHC helps promote your brand among key exhibitors and their influential patrons and contributes to the ongoing vitality of the theatrical experience. Vendors and distributors must sponsor to participate in the popular Meet the Vendors and Meet the Distributors trade shows. 2020 sponsorship deck now available!

Each year Art House Convergence offers initiatives and scholarships to improve access to the conference’s educational, networking, and professionalization opportunities. These programs are intended to cultivate diverse leadership, support first-time attendees,  and strengthen the conference and the organizations it serves by making them more inclusive. Learn more and apply here.

Art House Convergence encourages cinema exhibitors in all stages of their career to get involved with planning our annual conference, regional seminars, and other programs. Learn more about volunteer opportunities here.

Each year the Art House Convergence community celebrates achievements in film exhibition and contributions to the fields of art house and independent cinema with the Spotlight Lifetime Achievement Award and the Founders’ Distinguished Service Award (The Russell B. Collins Award). Read more about Art House Convergence Awards. Nominations are due by August 21, 2019.

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.