American Stag

Three Rivers Film Festival favorite Ben Meade (Vakvagany, Bazaar Bizarre) traces the forgotten history of "stag" films -- those scratchy, under-the-counter, 10-minute sex flicks. It includes rare footage throughout, such as the mythical stag films of Marilyn Monroe and Barbara Streisand....more

Appalshop Films

Coal-themed films from members of Appalshop, a non-profit multi-disciplinary arts and education center in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Sludge is a documentary on the collapse of a Martin County coal-slurry "pond" that sent 306 million gallons of the liquid into surrounding communities. Slow Voltage is a collage of vintage educational films and new documentary footage. Nimrod Workman: To Fit My Own Category is a visit with the 80-year-old coalman, father of thirteen, and singer of traditional ballads and original folksongs. ...more

The Aura

Following up his successful Nine Queens, director Fabien Bielinsky tells the story of a shy taxidermist named Espinoza who secretly dreams of executing the perfect robbery. His dreams come true when he accidentally kills a man on a hunting trip and inherits the man's scheme to rob an armored van. ...more

Avenue Montaigne

As breezy as a stroll along the chic Parisian street where it unfolds, this engaging romantic comedy from filmmaker Daniéle Thompson filters several stories of the upscale Champs-Elysées cultural scene through the eyes of a penniless, fresh-faced charmer from the provinces. Beautiful cinematography provides a stunning view of the romantic metropolis and the talented ensemble cast makes a charming Parisian Gem. ...more

Brothers of the Head

With a This is Spinal Tap sensibility, this is the story of conjoined-twin musicians plucked from the countryside by a slick star-maker and launched on the London pop scene, circa 1970. With faux-reportage (tracking down the twins after their break-up) and "archival" footage from their heyday, the film conveys the addictive energy of live rock ...more

The Case of the Grinning Cat

In the latest creation from legendary French experimental filmmaker Chris Marker, we meander through Paris over the course of three years, ostensibly in search of the mysterious “grinning cats” whose stenciled image have sprung up all over. The film begins in 2001 when Paris was still fresh from the shock of the September 11 attacks. Over the next year, in the lead-up to the Iraq war, the city’s youth march in numerous demonstrations for many causes as Marker continues his pursuit of the mysterious cats. ...more

The Cave of the Yellow Dog

Set in Mongolia’s north-western plains, this utterly charming story will melt your heart. At the center is a six-year-old girl, the oldest of three children in a nomadic clan of shepherds, who finds a stray dog near the family's yurt. Her father, concerned about bad luck from a dog that might have associated with wolves, orders her to get rid of him. But his daughter asserts a steely persistence, attempting to hide her new friend ...more

The Chelsea Girls

The Chelsea Girlsoffers an unforgettably camp tableaux of the 1960s art scene, from hustlers to hopheads, all engaging in antisocial activity. When it was released, Newsweek praised it as the "Iliad of the underground." The stars were among Warhol’s most “super”: Ondine, Nico, Gerard Malanga, Ingrid Superstar, Mary Woronov, International Velvet, Marie Menken, Eric Emerson, Mario Montez, and others. From the original footage (over six hours), Warhol created six 35-minute movies into pairs. ...more

Cinematographer Style

Why do movies look and feel the way they do? Call it magic, or call it cinematography. Out from behind the camera, 110 of the movies’ most gifted pros discuss their craft in this riveting documentary. A panel discussion follows the screening, led by local cinematographers and the film’s executive producer John Johnston; presented by Kodak. ...more

Climates

Straight from this year’s New York and Toronto Film Festivals, Climates marks a step forward in the quickly evolving world of digital filmmaking, employing the unique textures and possibilities of the digital image. In this film, the droll Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Distant) moves metaphorically and geographically from the warmth of western Turkey to the snowy cold of its eastern border in this visually stunning tale of a couple’s break-up and the aftermath. ...more

Close to Home

Two 18-year-old girls – one rebellious and outgoing, one introverted and timid – are thrown together in the Israeli Border Police. They are assigned to a patrol in Jerusalem as part of their compulsory military service. This "buddy film" follows the volatile relationship between the two while they attempt to ignore the reality that slowly makes its way into their lives ...more

Competitive Shorts Program

Space is devoted within the Film Festival each year for a competitive selection of Short Films – a program for media artists to present work that allows them to creatively take risks, break new ground or challenge the viewer. 18 winning shorts divided into two separate programs. ...more

Delwende

This inspiring film is based on the true story of Napoko Diarha, a beautiful young dancer exiled to a mysterious community of witches. She is accused of having eaten a soul and will be subjected to the elders’ decree, and the traditional rules which continue to dictate life in African villages today. In Burkina Faso, like in the rest of Africa, ancestral customs often lay down the law...more

Dodo

Comedian and Shenango Valley native Bob Golub has fashioned a hilarious portrait of growing up in a family of ten in a working class suburb of Pittsburgh. Golub started filming his family 26 years ago and has compiled combinations of old and new footage, along with pictures and actors to tell this quintessential American tale. Dodo is the unfortunate nickname of Bob’s father, a roofer by trade, who loved his kids but didn’t express it ...more

Film Kitchen

This special edition of the popular monthly showcase for independent work, features The Dabawallas, a documentary by Carnegie Mellon professor Paul Goodman. It’s about a remarkable large-scale, low-tech meal-delivery service in contemporary India. Goodman is scheduled to appear. Film Kitchen is co-sponsored by Pittsburgh City Paper, Isoldi’s on the Strip, WYEP, and Pittsburgh Brewing.

49 Up

The seventh in a series of landmark documentaries that began 42 years ago when director Michael Apted, inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-olds from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future. He has returned to interview his subjects every seven years since....more

4

This controversial drama with political overtones weaves a disturbing and vivid tale of modern Russia. Three strangers meet in a Moscow bar one late night and spin fantastic stories, all of them lies. They depart and go their separate ways through a landscape filled with decaying meat, wild dogs, ravenous crones, cloned piglets, and modern industrial horrors. ...more

The Guatemalan Handshake

After a massive power outage in a small town, Donald the demolition derby driver (Will Oldham) vanishes, leaving his friends and family in a quandary. The Guatemalan Handshake captures a childhood summer full of carnivals, lightning bugs and fireworks, with just a splash of David Lynch’s view of Americana thrown in ...more

Home Front

When Blairsville’s Jeremy Feldbusch was deployed to Iraq in 2003, he was a confident 21-year-old with a wrestler’s body. Less than four months later, a piece of shrapnel got past his goggles and embedded itself in his frontal lobe, leaving him blind and bedridden. Home Front is the heartfelt story of his homecoming ...more

An Independent Portrait

This is the Pittsburgh premiere by local filmmaker José Muniain, just back from the Latino International Film Festival in Los Angeles. It begins as film director Robert Young sits for his first formal portrait with the Spanish painter Félix de la Concha. In the process, the two artists discuss their calling. ...more

Invisible Waves

This gritty Asian crime film follows the story of a sous chef who's ordered to kill his boss’ wife. The fact that he's having an affair with her at the time makes the murder both easier and harder. After the boss sends him on a slow boat from Hong Kong to Phuket, he meets a seductive Korean woman and then a Japanese yakuza. When his life starts taking a downward spiral he no longer know who to trust ...more

Johan

Johan, played by 24-year-old Dutch heartthrob Michiel Huisman, is the eleventh male child in a family of soccer players. The boys make up a complete team, but Johan defies them all by wanting to be a singer. A lovely little about following your dreams, family expectations, and romance. ...more

Jumping Off Bridges

The teenagers in this film might be from your high school or mine. They scribble in notebooks, listen to punk rock music, and hang out with their friends. The title refers to a game 17-year-old Zak and his friend Eric have developed over the years ...more

The Lives of Others

This political thriller chronicles the consequences of the East German Minister of Culture's decision to investigate, by means of surveillance, the lives of a successful playwright and his girlfriend, a popular actress – even though they pose no threat to the state. With its superb cast, this intense drama succeeds both as a convincing historical recreation and as a compelling tale of individuals whose lives are shaped by the society they live in. ...more

The Motel

This is a beautifully observed portrait of a Chinese-American 13-year-old boy named Ernest who lives and works in a dingy motel operated by his mother. One minute the chubby little guy pretends to battle against invisible intruders, "Star Wars" style, and the next he finds a nudie magazine and makes pretend sex moves. The film perfectly captures the glum desperation of inhabiting the biological limbo of early adolescence. ...more

La Moustache

A man wears a moustache every day of his adult life. One day he decides to shave it off and no one notices. In fact, his wife and his friends go so far as to inform him they've never actually seen him with a moustache. So begins this psychological mystery ...more

Off the Black

This coming-of-age sports story follows Dave, a teenager coping with a distant father by forming an unlikely friendship with the disheveled, irascible high school umpire Ray, played by Nick Nolte. But Ray’s not much of a father figure. He’s an aging, divorced drunk, who should’ve been a successful baseball player. Ray is the heart and soul of this fearless portrait, and the acclaimed actor utterly devastates us in his raging lead performance ...more

Old Joy

Starring Mt. Lebanon’s Daniel London, Old Joy is the keenly observed story of two old friends who reunite for a camping weekend in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Set in the context of today’s political climate, Mark (London), on the verge of fatherhood, is the serious one, and Kurt (Will Oldham), in the midst of a series of wild adventures, is more carefree. Featuring the music of Yo La Tengo ...more

Pandora’s Box

with live music by Philip Carli

Commemorating the centennial birth of legendary actress Louise Brooks (Nov. 14, 1906), we present a beautiful restored print of the scintillating German Expressionist masterpiece that made her famous. ...more

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes

The long-awaited second feature by the Brothers Quay, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is a fabulist universe as unique and arcane as any imaginable. The story begins with the abduction of a famous opera singer on the eve of her wedding. The evil Dr. Droz has taken her away to the Carpathian Mountains. An innocent piano tuner is summoned to the mad Droz's secluded villa to service his strange musical automatons ...more

Pittsburgh

Filmed here in 2004, Pittsburgh follows Jeff Goldblum’s return to his hometown to star in Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera’s production of The Music Man with his then-fiancée, Catherine Wreford. This deliciously deadpan comedy walks an elegant line between improvisation, documentary, and re-enactment. ...more

Princesas

Caye and Zule are complicated, determined women struggling to survive as two street "putas" in a tough, Madrid barrio. Both pin their dreams on money or idealized relationships to get them through the hard days. And both begin to see each other as the only thing solid enough to hold onto. Princesas examines the forces that perpetuate poverty, but it is also a work of poetic realism infused with a wonderful, figurative touch. ...more

Requiem

This compelling drama, set in the 70s, follows a fragile young German girl during her first year away from home -- a strict religious family in a small town. Despite her long battle with epilepsy, she is anxious to study at the university. But a new friendship with Hanna and budding romance with Stefan crack open the shell of faith and family security. Alternately shocking and meditative, Requiem is a bold triumph for the director and his muse, actress Sandra Hüller. ...more

Speedy

with the Alloy Orchestra

The great Harold Lloyd stars as a happy-go-lucky soda jerk who falls for the daughter of the last horse-drawn tram driver in the city. When railroad developers try to put the old man out of business, Lloyd stumbles in and tries to save the day. The Alloy Orchestra provides original accompaniment for the film’s famous Coney Island sequence and a rousing chase scene. ...more

Stolen

In1990 -- in the wee hours after Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day -- thieves disguised as cops entered the Gardner museum and successfully perpetrated the largest art heist in modern history. Among the thirteen priceless paintings stolen were works by Rembrandt, Degas, Manet, and Johannes Vermeer’s rare The Concert. At the heart of this glob-trotting, edge-of-your-seat, documentary-thriller is Harold Smith, the most renowned art detective in the world ...more

Tales of the Rat Fink

Ron Mann’s (Comic Book Confidential, Grass) newest film is a wildly inventive bio about Renaissance man Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, who engineered a shift in mid-twentieth century culture with his customized cars, “monster” T-shirts and America’s alternative rodent, “Rat Fink". Mann’s largely animated documentary features the voice talents of John Goodman, Ann-Margret, Jay Leno, Brian Wilson, Tom Wolfe, Matt Groening, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Paul LeMat, and The Smothers Brothers ...more

Ten Canoes

From a far away land, Ten Canoes is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. This groundbreaking film is the first Australian feature film completely filmed in the indigenous Aboriginal language. Set a thousand years ago, well before the arrival of the Europeans, it is the season of goose egg gathering. Ten men, led by the tribe’s elder, head into the forest to harvest barks for canoe making ...more

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

with original live music by Puerto Muerto

The musical duo are traveling the country with a new interpretation of this bloodcurdling 1974 classic whose raw power terrifies us even today. An original live “overscore,” evoking old spaghetti westerns and a haunted Americana, is performed live by Chicago's Puerto Muerto over the original soundtrack. ...more

13 Tzameti

Winner of a Best First Feature at the Venice Film Festival and a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, a perspiring first film from the young Georgian director Gela Babluani. His pale-faced brother Georges plays a builder who, whether from boredom or bravado, assumes the identity of a deceased client, plunging into an adventure whose outcome he cannot guess. ...more

Wassup Rockers

After inciting uproars with Kids, Bully, and Ken Park, director Larry Clark returns with an observational tale based on the real lives of seven Latino skaters from South Central LA.  With a loose approach to storytelling, Rockers follows the band of outsiders, Latino teenagers who shun peer-mandated hip-hop for the Ramones...more

Words of My Perfect Teacher

Over the course of one year this charming documentary follows three students on a quest for wisdom. The film’s point, inspired by Buddhist philosophy, centers on how to reach those with closed hearts and entrenched views. And Buddhism says that to study the mind and walk a path toward enlightenment, you need a teacher. Enter: soccer obsessed citizen of the world, Dzongsar Khyentse Norbu Rinpoche, one of the world's most eminent Buddhist teachers ...more