1998 Taiwanese drama-musical film The Hole (洞) in Pittsburgh, September 21 through 24.

The 1998 Taiwanese drama-musical film The Hole (洞) will play in Pittsburgh from September 21 through 24.

Set on the eve of the 21st century, Tsai Ming-liang’s fourth feature turns a crumbling Taipei apartment block into one of cinema’s strangest and most tender end-of-the-world romances. Perennial muse Lee Kang-sheng (“the man upstairs”) and Yang Kuei-mei (“the woman downstairs”) are among the building’s last holdouts, refusing evacuation as a mysterious epidemic spreads outside and rain batters the city without end. When a plumber leaves behind an unfinished repair, the man’s floor opens into an accidental passage between two sealed-off lives, turning leaks, trash, pesticide, and petty territorial warfare into a strange form of courtship. Among the most disarmingly funny and cathartic entries in Tsai’s filmography, The Hole finds hope in a world that seems to be falling apart, breaking its deadpan plague scenario open with splendorous Grace Chang musical numbers and poker-faced slapstick.

The film plays at the Harris Theater in downtown's Cultural District (map) and tickets are available online.

2026 film Filipiñana in Pittsburgh for SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Fest, September 19.

The 2026 Filipino film Filipiñana will play in Pittsburgh on September 19, part of this year's SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Fest. A synopsis, from SCREENSHOT:

In Filipiñana, Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) — a new “tee girl” at a luxury golf course – attempts to navigate the quiet luxury and ruthless hierarchical structure of Manila’s wealthy elite. Even as Isabel becomes increasingly entranced with the club’s president Dr. Palanca, she also seems to know secrets that point to Palanca’s dark history. The film’s highly artificial shots of composed pastel symmetries and minutely choreographed workers paint a portrait of Manila’s high society as simultaneously banal and terrifying. The luxurious facility echoes the country’s instabilities: its challenges from climate upheaval amid an increasingly wealthy elite, its history of violence, and its underlying class conflicts. First-time feature director Rafael Manual’s confident artisanship and darkly funny writing are remarkable, but Agoto is the standout star of the film, as a young woman who wants a different life than has been allocated to her. Her relationship with Dr. Palanca maps the Philippines’s past onto its present, showing how even the most elite can’t escape the realities in which they live.

It plays from 7:00 pm at the Harris Theater in downtown's Cultural District (map) and tickets are available online. University of Pittsburgh students, faculty, and staff can use promo code ASIAN2026 to get free tickets, but must show valid university ID at the door.

An Evening With the Incredible Ming-Na Wen, October 8 in Shadyside.

Riverstone Books will present "An Evening With the Incredible Ming-Na Wen" on October 8 at Third Presbyterian Church in Shadyside (map).

Join us for an unforgettable evening with beloved actress and Pittsburgh's own , Ming-Na Wen!

Join us on Thursday, October 8th to celebrate the release of Ming-Na Wen's cookbook, Have You Eaten Yet?

This cookbook is a heartfelt collection of stories and recipes from Ming-Na Wen, weaving together her childhood in her family’s Pittsburgh Chinese restaurant with the dishes she now cooks at home for loved ones and friends.

We are excited to announce that author Jim Rooney (A Different Way to Win: Dan Rooney’s Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule), member of the legendary Rooney family, will be our moderator for the evening!

See below for all details regarding the event and please reach out to us if you have any questions.

2025 Japanese film Two Seasons, Two Strangers (旅と日々), starring Shim Eun-kyung, in Pittsburgh on September 20, part of SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Fest.

The 2025 Japanese film Two Seasons, Two Strangers (旅と日々), starring Korean actress Shim Eun-kyung, will play in Pittsburgh on September 20, part of this year's SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Fest.

Inspired by two of Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga short stories – A View of the Seaside and Mr. Ben and His Igloo – the film connects and contrasts two moments in time and space, exploring how lives and stories can be viewed, reviewed, and reimagined in cinema. In the first story, a damp, windswept summer by the sea provides the location where two young strangers exchange tentative glances and halting conversation. In the second, a screenwriter, Li, meets the enigmatic innkeeper Benzo at a remote snowy inn. In both, director Sho Mikaye (whose first film, Small, Slow but Steady screened at our 2023 festival) bridges connections between strangers to give us a beautiful, intimate, at times surreal, portrait of human connectivity.

It plays at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium in Oakland (map) and tickets are available online. Tickets are free for CMU students and for University of Pittsburgh students, faculty, and staff.

2025 Chinese film Gloaming in Luomu (罗目的黄昏) in Pittsburgh, September 19, part of SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Festival.

The 2025 Chinese film Gloaming in Luomu (罗目的黄昏) will play in Pittsburgh on September 19, part of this year's SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Festival. A synopsis, from SCREENSHOT:

CONTENT WARNING: Addiction

When Bai (Bai Baihe) – a dancer with an alcohol problem – receives a postcard from her missing boyfriend that only says “Gloaming in Luomu,” she heads to the untouched, idyllic village to try to find out what happened to him. There, she connects with a host of interesting characters, all of whom help her as she feels increasingly more connected to her absent companion. In Gloaming in Luomu, Korean-Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu offers a radical reworking vanished soulmate theme, with the Sichuan-set tale unfolding like a delirious dream, the mysteries of its complex characters and metaphysical conversations heightened by meticulous camerawork and imaginative sound design. The film captures the surreal disjuncture of searching while also lost and of looking for a shade of the past–someone who may or may not be a fever dream.

It plays in room 332 of the Cathedral of Learning (map) and tickets are available online. Tickets are free for students, faculty, and staff with a valid University of Pittsburgh ID card, and for Carnegie Mellon University students. 

Laurie Trok x Peel Open Session, debuting new menu, September 19 at Peel in Squirrel Hill.

Newish Squirrel Hill teahouse Peel is hosting an Open Session on September 19 where it will unveil its new menu.

Laurie Trok x Peel is a kinetic menu collaboration for play, translocal encounters, and rituals.

Laurie is a multidisciplinary artist whose work leans into our experience of the ephemeral and the ways time is made visible by entropy. Food is central to this practice and Laurie has sought to create menus that investigate our relationship to time.

Often sourcing directly from their own garden, Laurie’s and Peel’s practices are both particularly attuned to time and place-specificity. The collaboration approaches temporalities and inheritances as sites where play, locality and collaboration can generate speculative rituals for tasting, relating and gathering.

Your ticket gives you access to the space from 12-5pm, with unlimited menu offerings available throughout the session (menu below). Once the reservation is made, there are no additional charges at Peel.

Tickets are available online for $38. More information is on Peel's Instagram post. Peel opened in February at 5806 Forbes Ave., second floor, above Uncle Sam's (map). 

2026 Indonesian horror film Sleep No More (Monster Pabrik Rambut) in Pittsburgh, September 18, part of SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Festival.

The 2026 Indonesian horror film Sleep No More (Monster Pabrik Rambut) will play in Pittsburgh on September 18, part of this year's SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Festival. A synopsis, by SCREENSHOT:

CONTENT WARNING: Violence, Extreme Gore

Following the horrific death of their mother while on the job at a wig factory in Jakarta, sisters Putri (Rachel Amanda) and Ida (Lutesha) decide to visit the premises to investigate. Upon arriving at the gloomy, prison-like building, they meet the mysterious and intimidating Mrs. Maryati (Didik Nini Thowok), the owner of the Evergreen factory, who tells them they will have to work there to pay off the colossal debt their late mother had incurred to fund Ida’s education. There are great bonuses, but the workers live in an exhausted, zombie-like state. When more workplace accidents (and eventual deaths) occur, the sisters begin to investigate. This visceral, grotesque body horror underscores the relationship between violence and labor, and the ability of capitalism to both steal everything from the human body, even using magic as a labor-saving resource in the pursuit of global profit.

It plays from 8:00 pm at the Harris Theater in downtown's Cultural District (map) and tickets are available online. University of Pittsburgh students, faculty, and staff can use promo code ASIAN2026 to get free tickets, but must show valid university ID at the door.

2025 Taiwanese film Before the Bright Day (南方時光) in Pittsburgh, September 18, for SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Festival.

The 2025 Taiwanese film Before the Bright Day (南方時光) will play in Pittsburgh on September 18, part of this year's SCREENSHOT: ASIA Film Festival running from September 16 through 23. A synopsis, by SCREENSHOT:

Before the Bright Day, the poignant directorial debut of emerging Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Han Tsao, captures a young man’s turbulent coming-of-age against the backdrop of the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis. Chou (Hsuan-Li Chen), labeled a “B-class loser” by his teacher, yearns for more than his uneventful adolescence—especially with Min, the girl he likes, placed in the elite A-class. Disillusioned by his bleak home life and drawn to rebellion, Chou idolizes a small-time gang leader named Button. But as political tensions rise and his family’s financial stability crumbles, Chou’s world begins to fall apart. Button leaves for the military, his high school crush’s family may emigrate from the threat of impending war, and Chou is caught smoking, which is cause for expulsion. Drifting without direction, he must navigate a society on edge, where youthful dreams and harsh realities collide. With raw emotion and historical resonance, Before the Bright Day explores identity, class, and disillusionment during a pivotal moment in Taiwan’s modern history.

It plays at 1:30 pm at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium in Oakland (map), and tickets are available online. Tickets are free for CMU students and for University of Pittsburgh students, faculty, and staff.

2026 Korean movie Hope (호프) stays in Pittsburgh through (at least) September 24.

The 2026 Korean movie Hope (호프), which opened in Pittsburgh on September 9, will remain here through (at least) September 24.

A police chief, a policewoman and a group of hunters try to track down and kill a mysterious creature that's laying waste to a Korean village.

It plays locally at many area theaters, including: Squirrel Hill Manor, AMC Loews Waterfront, AMC Westmoreland in Greensburg, Chartiers Valley Luxury 14 + PTX, and the Cinemark theater in Robinson. Tickets are available online.

Singer-songwriter Lee Emi in Pittsburgh, November 7.

Singer-songwriter Lee Emi will perform in Pittsburgh on November 7.

Born in South Korea and raised in Michigan, singer-songwriter Lee Emi has performed her music for audiences across the country and overseas, using those experiences to add grit to her dark, thematic songwriting. Her indie-pop-rock music bears sharp teeth, leaning into the rawness of anger, grief, and self-doubt, weaving powerful melodies around potent lyrics that ask all of us: am I good enough?

Originally named Lee Sang-Eun and raised under the name Emilee Petersmark, Lee Emi began her career in 2010 as a primary songwriter and co-lead singer/guitarist in beloved West Michigan indie band, The Crane Wives. For the next 15 years, she would play bars, listening rooms, theatres, and concert venues across the continental US and release 5 studio records with the Crane Wives, all while quietly building a personal cache of songs that would eventually become her first solo record, DESTROY EVERYTHING, to be released in October 2026.

Doors open at 7:00 pm at the Thunderbird Cafe, show starts at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online. The Thunderbird Cafe & Music Hall is located at 4023 Butler St. in Lawrenceville (map).