Film Pittsburgh

Reminder: The deadline to send us your nomination for the 6th Annual Richard Meritzer Award is this Friday, July 19! 🏆 Now's your chance to nominate a person or organization that has made foundational changes in Pittsburgh and/or Allegheny County by creating new levels of accessibility and inclusivity.

Send your entries to [email protected]. Thank you! 🧡

Learn more about the Meritzer Award: https://filmpittsburgh.org/pages/meritzer-award

We're so excited to announce our new Teen Screen Assistant Director, James Ingoldsby!

James is an educator and researcher. He grew up outside of Philadelphia and began his career as a refugee advocate and ESL instructor. He holds degrees from Vassar College, the University of Sussex, and Cornell University. After a decade of leading writing courses at Cornell and in the New York prison system, he relocated to Pittsburgh to teach middle and high school courses in history, language, and literature.

Join us in welcoming James to the Film Pittsburgh team! 🎉

Got a short screenplay that you're itching to shoot? 📝🎥 Our friends at Stowe Story Labs are offering a $50,000 Short Film Production Grant, which they have developed with partners including The PAGE International Screenwriting Awards, ARRI, the Galway Film Fleadh, Sidewalk Film Festival, Seed&Spark, Portrait, and WeShort.

Stowe is generously offering our friends at Film Pittsburgh a 15% discount to apply. Use code SSLFP24 on either Coverfly or FilmFreeway.

The FINAL DEADLINE is Monday, July 22!

Apply here: https://stowestorylabs.org/short-film-production-grant

In addition, Film Pittsburgh is excited to partner with Stowe by offering finalists in this year’s Short Film Production Grant free submission waivers to submit their scripts to the 2025 Pittsburgh Shorts and Script Competition! Happy writing!

Film Pittsburgh is now hiring a GRANT WRITER! 📣

We are looking for a team player who is highly motivated by our mission to raise the necessary funds to present exemplary film programming throughout the year. The selected candidate will have strong writing skills, experience writing grants and reports, and be highly organized and detail-oriented.

Learn more & apply:

Job Opportunities Film Pittsburgh presents independent cinema that encourages tolerance and understanding and embraces and celebrates the diversity of our shared human experiences. Through four distinct film festivals and a teen education program, Film Pittsburgh impacts more than 30,000 people each year.   

On the 1st of every month, our programming team highlights a critically acclaimed, fan-favorite, or socially relevant short film that you can watch from anywhere, for free. For our July Spotlight, we're featuring the short film 'Birthday' to honor our country’s service members, as well as filmmaker Chris King—a Pittsburgh Shorts alumni—who passed earlier this year.

This film follows a severely wounded Marine and his wife finally come home following months of surgeries and rehab. It's a powerful and realistic depiction of what it is like for our wounded vets and their spouses as they face enormously difficult times ahead. Click the link below to watch, available for the month of July only! 🎬

filmpittsburgh.org/pages/spotlight

It's that time of year for Cinema in the Park! Pull up a lawn chair or picnic blanket and join Film Pittsburgh's ReelAbilities for an outdoor sunset screening of The Peanut Butter Falcon, hosted by CitiParks Office of Special Events! 🎥 🍿 🏙️

This event is FREE, but pre-registration is encouraged and additional accommodations are available upon request here: https://forms.gle/JxLxQYAUxZ1n3hE46

We will see you July 28th at Schenley Plaza! Don't miss it! 🎞️

Screenwriters, you have just a few more days to submit your short film script of 15 pages or less to meet our deadline of SUNDAY, JUNE 30th at 11:59pm!

We organize staged readings of all the finalist scripts at Pittsburgh Shorts and Script Competition in November.

🎬 Submit your script now!

https://writers.coverfly.com/competitions/view/pittsburgh-shorts-and-script-competition

Fun news! Our long-time creative collaborators at Wall-to-Wall Studios Inc.—the geniuses behind the look and feel of the Film Pittsburgh brand + so many of our festivals' unique designs—won a Silver ADDY Award for their work on the 2023 Three Rivers Film Festival & Pittsburgh Shorts campaigns! This is just one of their many projects recognized this year by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the nation’s oldest national advertising industry trade association. Congratulations, Wall-to-Wall! 🍾

"Someday, my summer will come."

For June's Spotlight, a 10-year-old girl navigates her way through the tumultuous foster care system. This haunting, award-winning short film aims to spread awareness, encourage empathy, and inspire positive change.

Watch here: https://filmpittsburgh.org/pages/spotlight

Check out this upcoming (free!) webinar about disabilities + filmmaking, led by Emmy Award-winning Film Pittsburgh alumni Dan and Samuel Habib ("My Disability Roadmap"—ReelAbilities 2023)! 👇

We are super excited to share this incredible (and free!) webinar about disabilities + filmmaking! On Monday, June 3, from 1-3pm, Western Pennsylvania Disability History and Action Consortium is hosting "The Camera’s Eye: Telling the Story of Disability through the Power of Film" led by Dan and Samuel Habib—Film Pittsburgh alumni filmmakers of the Emmy Award-winning short doc "My Disability Roadmap" that we screened at ReelAbilities 2023.

Samuel and Dan Habib will share several films—including My Disability Roadmap—and discuss their strategies for creating a culture of inclusion. We hope to see you there!

🎥: https://www.wpdhac.org/the-cameras-eye-telling-the-story-of-disability-through-the-power-of-film-webinar/

The 13th annual Robinson International Short Film Competition was a night to remember. The Carnegie Art Theater was completely packed, and our three winning filmmakers joined us to receive their $18K in awards for their next projects—all thanks to the Sanford N. Robinson, Sr. Memorial Lecture Endowment Fund & the entire Robinson family. Thank you to all who celebrated Jewish-themed short filmmaking with us. We’ll see you next time. ❤️

🏆 Gold Prize Winner | The Accident, dir. Omri Dekel Kadosh
🏆 Silver Prize Winner | Girl No 60427, dir. Shulamit Lifsh*tz & Oriel Berkovits
🏆 Silver Prize Winner | Jack and Sam, dir. Jordan Matthew Horowitz

Drumroll, please! The JFilm 2024 Audience Award Winners are...

🏆 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 | 999: The Forgotten Girls
🏆 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 | Running on Sand

And the directors have something to say!

From director Heather Dune Macadam: “Receiving the Audience Award for 999 is such an honor, especially from such a prestigious festival previewing so many excellent films. That Pittsburgh audiences were so inspired by our forgotten girls that they voted for 999 means not only that our film touched your audience’s hearts, but that the girls will never be forgotten, again.”

From director Adar Shafran: “It is so exciting to me to win the Audience Award in Pittsburgh with Running on Sand. It’s always so great to hear that people from all over the world are watching it, enjoying it, meeting the film’s main character, Aumari, and learning his story."

999thefirstwomeninauschwitz Picture Tree International GmbH

Don't mind us, just working on our JFilm 2024 scrapbook. If you joined us in person this year, maybe you'll see your shayna punim. 💙

JFilm may be over, but we still have more Jewish-themed films to share! Join us for the Robinson International Short Film Competition on Tuesday, May 21 at the Carnegie Museum of Art, where we've queued up 6 top-notch shorts from around the world and brought them to Pittsburgh! $18,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to 3 attending filmmakers, and artisan desserts and drinks will round out the evening at our after-party in the Café Carnegie.

Learn more & get tickets: https://filmpittsburgh.org/pages/robinson-shorts

We were so fortunate to have filmmaker Heather Dune Macadam join Film Pittsburgh for a special screening of her documentary 999: The Forgotten Girls (999thefirstwomeninauschwitz) for middle and high school students with Teen Screen: A Free Film Program for Students & Teachers. Holocaust education for our young generations is crucial—so, thank you Heather, Tracy, and Lori for guiding an enriching, sensitive, and educational discussion after the film.

Thank you to the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh for supporting these screenings of the film!
Photography: Porter Loves

Make the most of JFilm's final weekend! JFilm is coming to a close this Sunday, but never fear—the weekend is PACKED full of Jewish-themed films at The Oaks Theater! Overwhelmed with choices? Our festival programmers highlight some of their must-sees below.

01. Running on Sand
🎟️ | https://filmpittsburgh.org/calendar/running-on-sand-event
02. Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortaro
🎟️ | https://filmpittsburgh.org/calendar/kidnapped-the-abduction-of-edgardo-mortaro-event
03. Shari & Lamb Chop*
🎟️ | https://filmpittsburgh.org/calendar/shari-lamb-chop-event

* Special ticket price includes free treats from Oakmont Bakery!

TONIGHT is Unspoken's Pittsburgh premiere at The Oaks Theater at 7pm, followed by a Q&A with visiting director Jeremy Borison! You won't want to miss this "magnificent coming-of-age film set in America’s Modern Orthodox Jewish community." (Thanks, QBurgh!)

🌈 Learn more: https://filmpittsburgh.org/calendar/unspoken-event

Someone To Watch Over Me – a review of “Unspoken” A witty, acerbic teen, Noam (Charlie Korman), is cleaning out his grandfather’s bedroom, shortly after sitting shiva, when he finds a keepsake box that contains a photograph of his grandfather, Hei…

Last night, we had a theater full of Catskills alumni! (What are the chances you all ended up in Pittsburgh?!) Thank you all who came to see "The Catskills"—especially those who stayed to participate in an enriching Film Schmooze with Dr. Rachel Kranson, where we shared fond (and foodie) memories of a time gone by. We'll see you tonight at The Oaks Theater for another incredible documentary, 999: The Forgotten Girls, followed by a Q&A with the director!

A fun shot from JFilm Festival day 2 of the crowd enjoying the wacky and wonderful Remembering Gene Wilder Documentary. ❤️ We're at CMU's McConomy Auditorium this weekend, and then at The Oaks Theater starting tomorrow, May 6! Tickets at FilmPittsburgh.org.

Fresh batch of Programmer Picks for the next few days of JFilm! Film Pittsburgh’s Executive Director, Kathryn Spitz Cohan, highlights JFilm’s must-see movies playing this week at The Oaks Theater. Come for the films, and stay for the filmmaker Q&As and Film Schmoozes!

01. The Boy in the Woods 🎟️ https://bit.ly/jfilm-boyinthewoods
02. 999: The Forgotten Girls 🎟️ https://bit.ly/jfilm-999forgottengirls
03. Unspoken 🎟️ bit.ly/jfilm-unspoken
04. Haute Couture 🎟️ https://bit.ly/jfilm-hautecouture

So, about last night... 🤩

We are still starry-eyed from the Opening Night of the 31st annual JFilm Festival! With the Carnegie Music Hall as a beautiful backdrop, we presented the Pennsylvania premiere of Left Alone Rhapsody, featuring our special guests: the charismatic piano prodigy John Bayless and his partner-in-filmmaking Stewart Schulman. We had the honor of hearing John play for us, and then we schmoozed, noshed, and kvelled the night away. This is only the beginning. We'll see you tomorrow at CMU's McConomy Auditorium with more powerful, Jewish-themed films!

Thank you so much to our amazing friends on the Left Alone Rhapsody Host Committee who helped make this our GRANDEST JFilm Opening Night to date. The night was made possible by the Arthur and Betty J. Diskin Cultural Endowment Fund of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

To make an additional donation to the John Bayless Fund for Brain Research, click here: https://www.leftalonerhapsody.com/brain-fund

Photography credit: Porter Loves

This Saturday & Sunday, JFilm is bringing some incredible Jewish-themed feature films to CMU's McConomy Auditorium. Not sure what to see? Film Pittsburgh's festival programmers are here to help you find your new favorite movie. Check out their recommendations!

01. The Shadow of the Day 🎟️ https://filmpittsburgh.org/calendar/the-shadow-of-the-day-event
02. Listen 🎟️ https://filmpittsburgh.org/calendar/listen-event?day=05-04-2024
03. No Name Restaurant 🎟️ https://filmpittsburgh.org/calendar/no-name-restaurant-event

Remember—full-time students get in for $5, and ages 25 and under get in for $10! These tickets are only available at the door so we can check your ID.