The 28th Annual Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival opens this weekend. Known as “Reel Q,” the coming two weeks feature 15 narrative and documentary films, alongside three programs of shorts. The festival opens on Friday but continues throughout the weekend. Saturday and Sunday see a wonderfully eclectic set of programming come to the Harris Theater. Saturday features the New York-set explorative drama "The Happy Sad" alongside the James Franco-produced documentary "Interior. Leather Bar." Sunday sees the screening of Taiwanese rom-com Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? and the North American premiere of the Israeli drama Snails in the Rain. The Reel Q Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival begins this weekend, with showings beginning every two hours between from 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday and between 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday. All showings run at the Harris Theater in downtown Pittsburgh, and look for the festival to continue throughout the week and into next weekend.
How ready are you for the zombie apocalypse? You can test your survival skills this Saturday at the 2013 Pittsburgh Zombiefest. Part of World Zombie Day, the event includes a combination of live music, food, games and more. For the more competitive undead, you can face off against your fellow zombies at the Zombie Olympics, the Brain Eating Contest, the Ugly Pageant and the Best Scream Contest. The event culminates with a Zombie Walk, including the event’s first Zombie Bar Crawl. Come out and help Pittsburgh attempt to break the Guinness World Record for largest gathering of zombies this Saturday beginning at noon at Arsenal Park in Lawrenceville.
The Pillow Project teams up with Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area this weekend to create "The Jazz Furnace." The epic, one-day performance event is set at the Carrie Blast Furnace, and features improvisational jazz dance performances, large-scale video installations, and live music. The show attempts to “repurpose an iconic relic of our industrial history into a truly unique arts venue for the 21st century.” You can enjoy the performance in two sessions: during the Daytime Session, featuring live music, spontaneous dance, and large scale chalk installations and exhibits, or during the Nighttime Session, including several full-length dance performances alongside more live music and some live video and multimedia installations. The Pillow Project’s “The Jazz Furnace” runs this Saturday with a Daytime Session from noon to 5 p.m. and a Nighttime Session from 7 p.m. to Midnight at the Carrie Furnace in Braddock.
Miniature Curiosa returns to Pittsburgh bringing a large production to its miniscule sets. “Birds of America” is the puppet troupe’s seasonal appropriate contribution to the horror genre. The “horror play” features a story about a bird scholar and his wife as they live in a lonely house on a cliff. Using small cameras to navigate their tiny sets that project the show on to three large video screens, “Birds” soars through “frightful dreamscapes” to present a creatively suspenseful multimedia experience. The one-night only show opens this Saturday at 8 p.m. at the New Hazlett Theater in downtown Pittsburgh.
