STEEL CITY and FREE FILM, Part Two

Pittsburgh has an impressive film community, and University of Pittsburgh has a top-notch Film Studies Program. Don’t forget to take advantage of some of the city’s film screenings, festivals, and lectures, many of them free and serving complementary drink and nosh. If you can bear to leave your hibernation spot of choice, check out these numerous film events upcoming and ongoing:

FRIDAY NIGHT SCREENINGS: Los Amigos del Cine Latinoamericano’s Latin American Film Festival is going on every Friday through May 25th. Films start at 7:00pm at University of Pittsburgh’s Frick Fine Arts Auditorium in Oakland. All films free and open to the public! This Friday, February 2, 2007, will be the Pittsburgh premiere of "Cuestión de Fe" [“A Matter of Faith”] (1995), a road movie
by Bolivian director, Marcos Loayza. In Spanish with English subtitles; discussion will follow.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT SCREENINGS: Experimental, Underground, Revolutionary Avant Garde Film Shorts from Germany, Switzerland and Austria continues showing Wednesday nights at 7:30 pm through February 7th. This is on Pitt campus in David Lawrence Hall, Room 205, 3492 Forbes Ave. Free.

FEBRUARY 2nd LECTURE: Carnegie Mellon English Professor, Kathy Newman (author of “Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935-1947”), will give a lecture on Father Corridan, the real-life "Waterfront Priest" on whom Karl Malden's character in “On the Waterfront” (1954, dir. Elia Kazan) was based. This talk focuses on the progressive, working-class roots of the film and is drawn from Newman's second book project, “Lowbrow: The Forgotten Culture of the 1950s.” Lecture takes place on Friday, February 2 at 3:15 PM on Carnegie Mellon Campus, A53 Baker Hall.

SCREENING and LECTURE: February 8th, visiting videographers Alexandra Halkin (Chiapas Media Project) and Juan José García Ortiz (Ojo de Agua Comunicación Indigena Video Collective) will screen videos and speak on “Indigenous Filmmaking and Political Organizing in Latin America: Case Studies from Chiapas and Oaxaca.” That’s on Pitt campus at Alumni Hall Auditorium, Fifth & Lytton Ave’s. 6:00pm, Free.

FEBRAURY 15th ROUNDTABLE: The Pittsburgh Film Colloquium(held six times a year) presents a Roundtable discussion on “War and Visual Culture” with three Pitt Film Studies PhD students. One subtopic covers “The Martyr Video as Perceptual Warfare.” Free and open to the public. 5:30pm, 12th Floor of Cathedral of Learning, Pitt campus.

SCREENINGS: February 15-17th, The Chinese Film Festival will show three feature length films made in China in the 21st Century. Free on Pitt campus at Alumni Hall. For details see the Film Studies website.