The Pittsburgh Moving Picture Festival: Thriller Picture Show is the cinematic celebration of the macabre, the exciting, the bizarre, and the mysterious.

Film Screenings

In partnership with the George A. Romero Foundation (GARF), the Thriller Picture Show is also home to the Romero Lives commemorative event. Romero Lives 2023: The State of Nature showcases two George A. Romero classics that exemplify Hobbesian maxim that life in the state of nature can be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”: Day of the Dead and the 50th anniversary of The Crazies.

The Pittsburgh Moving Picture Festival celebrates both the art of cinema and the rich motion picture exhibition tradition of Pittsburgh. Early in the 20th century, Pittsburgh was a worldwide manufacturing leader in iron and, later, steel. The labor requirements to produce such output was enormous, with much of the manpower being supplied by the immigrant populations living in and around the mills. Due to the lack of leisure activities and the need to live close to the mills, local movie theaters emerged to offer a brief respite from the mundane mill-to-home routine. By 1914, it was estimated that there were approximately 200 movie theaters in the Pittsburgh region.

The Pittsburgh Moving Picture Festival honors Pittsburgh’s rich film heritage by showcasing features and short films from around the world and providing a theatrical opportunity for independent film in a setting that reflects both the history and the prestige of cinematic exhibition.