Aurora Picture Show

Aurora Picture Show began in 1998, when Houston artist and organizer Andrea Grover decided the city lacked places to see experimental and avant-garde film and video. She and a group of friends and volunteers converted a historic church into a community microcinema and started holding regular screenings with visiting artists. The first public program took place in June 1998, and Aurora became a nonprofit the next year. Its open-call Extremely Shorts Film Festival, for films three minutes long or less and judged each year by a different guest juror, also dates to 1998; the 29th edition ran May 29–30, 2026.

Aurora describes its early reputation as national: artists and funders saw it as one of a handful of American organizations committed to showing provocative, issue-oriented film and video art. As media and artists' practices changed, the programs grew to include site-specific work, performance, and installations, and Aurora began building partnerships across the city. In 2009 it started a week-long summer filmmaking camp for children, which grew into year-round residencies and workshops in schools, community centers, and hospitals, with campers' films premiering each summer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Aurora is also one of three organizations, with DiverseWorks and Project Row Houses, that administer The Idea Fund, an artist regranting program funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts whose first round was in 2009.

Aurora now works out of a renovated brick warehouse at 5601A Navigation Boulevard in the Second Ward, inside the East End Cultural District. Each spring it presents Night Light with Buffalo Bayou Partnership, an evening of newly commissioned video installations along the bayou that has drawn thousands each year since 2022, and it co-presents BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) with the Menil Collection, a projection night on the museum's front lawn. It also serves as fiscal sponsor for two Houston media arts projects, Señorita Cinema and Big Queer Picture Show.