Over 100 reels will roll in 10 days, when films from 36 countries will be screened at seven unique Philadelphia venues, including in University City.
In line with Penn’s “Year of Sound,” the University is sponsoring the Sight and Soundtrack section for the upcoming 22nd annual Philadelphia Film Festival from Oct. 17 to Oct. 27.
“We were actually not aware that Penn is hosting ‘Year of Sound’ when we decided to give them the section of Sight and Soundtrack,” Parinda Patel, managing director of the Philadelphia Film Society, said. “It was a funny coincidence.”
The University has sponsored the festival over the past five years and worked closely with the Philadelphia Film Society, a nonprofit arts organization, to bring this city-wide festivity to West Philadelphia.
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As part of the Graveyard Shift section, the festival will host a midnight horror movie screening on Oct. 18 and 19 at the Rave Cinema on 40th and Walnut streets.
“Horror movies received very good responses among college students last year,” Patel said.
The festival will also provide discount and free giveaway tickets to Penn students if there are unsold tickets left over.
One of 12 festival categories, the Penn-sponsored Sight and Soundtrack section will feature “rockumentaries, musician biopics and films that are centered on the unifying power of music,” according to the festival website.
“There isn’t one central theme — I like this section because it’s very diverse,” Michael Lerman, artistic director of the society, said. “They are all musical films but very different from each other.”
Movies in this section span from the comedic documentary “Great Hip Hop Hoax” — a film about two Scottish rappers reinventing themselves as West Coast Homeboys — to the Belgian drama film “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” which won the Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
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“The first and foremost criterion is always quality,” Lerman said. “We also spend a lot of time looking at what the audience in Philadelphia likes and responds to.”
On Oct. 17, the festival will open with “All Is Lost,” at the Perelman Theatre in the Kimmel Center. It will also include five centerpiece screenings: “August: Osage County,” “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” “Nebraska,” “Philomena” and “The Unknown Known.”
Lerman said they have plenty of great topics and genres to offer for Penn students.
“We definitely took into account the responses of college students,” he said. “Penn has really intelligent kids with really diverse interests. I encourage anyone at Penn to pick up and look through the program guide to find what sounds interesting to them.”
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