WQED Multimedia brings you Community Cinema, a free monthly documentary screening series on topics important to our community, region, and world. Pittsburgh's Community Cinema provides an opportunity to view films from the award-winning PBS series Independent Lens, prior to their release on television.
Pittsburgh's Community Cinema is an educational forum to explore and discuss the many important and timely social issues featured in the films. Pittsburgh's Community Cinema gives you a chance to share and act. Community Cinema is a lens that sharpens our world view and we're bringing it to you monthly with our community partner, the Girls Coalition of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
This Month's Film
The Revolutionary Optimists
Monday, May 13, 2013 at 5:30 pm - Union Project
Children in the slums of Calcutta are starting a revolution. Called to action by visionary former attorney Amlan Ganguly, the 'Daredevils' have already made radical health and sanitation improvements in one of the city's poorest slums -- awakening a neglected populace to the real possibility of change. Register Now
by Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen
Upcoming Films
Love Free or Die
June 2013
Love Free or Die is about a man whose two defining passions the world cannot reconcile: his love for God and for his partner Mark. The film is about church and state, love and marriage, faith and identity — and openly gay Bishop Eugene Robinson's struggle to dispel the notion that God’s love has limits.
by Macky Alston
Earlier In The Season
Half The Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Thursday, September 27 at 5:30 pm - WQED Multimedia
A landmark series based on the book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky follows celebrity activists America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union, and Olivia Wilde as they travel to six countries and meet inspiring, courageous individuals who are confronting oppression and developing real, meaningful solutions through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls.
by Maro Chermayeff, Jamie Gordon, Mikaela Beardsley
Solar Mamas
Thursday, November 29 at 5:30 - WQED Multimedia
Rafea — a 30-year-old Jordanian mother of four — is traveling outside of her village for the first time to attend a solar engineering program at India’s Barefoot College. She will join poor women like her from Guatemala, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Colombia to learn concrete skills to change their communities.
by Jehane Noujaim
As Goes Janesville
December 6, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Goodwill Industries of Southwestern Pennsylvania
America's middle class is dwindling, and the debate over how to save it is nowhere fiercer than in the normally tranquil state of Wisconsin. In Janesville, as jobs disappear and families are stretched to their breaking point, citizens and politicians are embroiled in an ideological battle about how to turn things around.
by Byron Hurt
Soul Food Junkies
Wednesday, January 23 at 5:30 pm - WQED Multimedia
Brought to you in partnership with the African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania
Saturday, January 26 at 1:00 pm - YWCA Homewood-Brushton Community Center
Brought to you in partnership with the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh
Soul food lies at the heart of African American cultural identity. The black community’s love affair with soul food is deep-rooted, complex, and in some cases, deadly. Soul Food Junkies puts this culinary tradition under the microscope to examine both its significance and its consequences.
by Byron Hurt
The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights
Saturday, February 9 at 7:00 pm - Senator John Heinz History Center
Brought to you in partnership with the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh
Whitney M. Young, Jr. was one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders of the civil rights era. As executive director of the National Urban League, he took the struggle for equality directly to the powerful white elite, gaining allies in business and government, including three presidents.
by Bonnie Boswell
Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines
Thursday, March 7, 6 pm - Toonseum
Trace the fascinating evolution and legacy of the original comic book Amazon, Wonder Woman. From her creation in the 1940s to the superhero blockbusters of today, pop-culture’s representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.
by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
The Island President
Thursday, April 18 at 5:30 pm - WQED Multimedia
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is confronting a problem greater than any world leader has ever faced — the literal survival of his country and everyone in it. His is the most low-lying country in the world, and a minor rise in sea level would literally erase it from the map.
by Jon Shenk, Bonni Cohen, and Richard Berge
