The Philadelphia Film Festival opens Thursday and West Philly is right in the thick of the action.

The 20th annual festival opens at The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts‘ Zellerbach Theater (3680 Walnut St.) with a screening of Like Crazy, the Sundance Grand Jury Prize (Best Picture) winner starring Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin. Tickets for the screening are $20 ($15 for members of the Philadelphia Film Society) and $50/$45 for the screening and an opening party.

The International House (3701 Chestnut St.) and The Rave movie theater (4012 Walnut St.) are two more key venues for this year’s festival. Films kick off at the International House at 5 p.m. on Friday and continue daily through Wednesday, Oct. 26. After a short break, films return on Sunday, Oct. 30. Films at The Rave also open on Friday and continue through Thursday, Oct. 27.

We have way too little space here to get into the dozens of films screening over the festival’s two weeks. You need to find yourself a handy film guide, which is available at various locations in the neighborhood (we got ours at Earth Cup near 45th and Pine). Here is the online schedule.

One feature film with West Philly connections that we would like to point out is The Destiny of Lesser Animals directed by Deron Albright and starring Yao B. Nunoo. You might recognize those two if you saw them because they spent many hours in West Philly establishments, including The Gold Standard or Dhalak, planning and discussing the film, which was shot in Ghana and West Philly.

Nunoo, a former Penn film student who also wrote the screenplay, stars as a police inspector in Ghana who is desperate to return to America after being deported. The film is modeled in part on Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog.

Geekadelphia posted its Top 8 films to check out here.

Tickets for regular individual screenings are $12 ($10 for Philadelphia Film Society members). Tickets for weekday matinees (before 5 p.m.) are $6/$5. All-access badges are also available. Go here for more information on tickets.

The International House Philadelphia is hosting a series of events this month dedicated to India and its rich culture. A photography exhibit, the Diwali festival, and the International Vision Award Ceremony are all part of the Incredible India! event series running in October and the beginning of November.

This week the International House invites neighbors to enjoy and learn more about Indian cuisine. This event will take place tomorrow, Oct. 18, at 6:00 p.m. at Tandoor India located at 106 S 40th Street. Tandoor India specializes in exotic North and South Indian cuisine. The restaurant’s host will select the menu and drinks and present a short overview of the food and culture of the region.

We hear that members of Youcie (the University City Young Friends group) will co-host the event, so this is also a great opportunity to meet them and learn more about the group.

Tickets are $25 and can be purchased here. For more Incredible India! and other events at the International House go here.

Several West Philly-based arts and culture organizations recently received some much-needed grants to help with everything from redesigning the hallways at Henry C. Lea Elementary School to keeping Shakespeare in Clark Park going.

The grants are from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts Project Stream, an off-shoot of the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts that makes grants of up to $3,000 available to individuals and organizations who work on arts projects. Information and applications for next year’s grants will be available in the spring.

Here’s a rundown of the West Philly winners thanks to the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance website (awards for the entire Philadelphia region are also available there):

• Yvette Almaguer and the Lea Visual Arts Program –  $1,999
“The Lea Visual Arts Program is a collaborative effort to improve school climate through innovative interior design and visual art interventions throughout hallways and stairwells of the Henry C. Lea School.” West Philly native and Penn Professor Justin McDaniel, a member of the West Philadelphia Coalition for Neighborhood Schools, helped with the grant application.

• Crossroads Music – $1,999
“Crossroads Music, the region’s only organization dedicated to presenting traditional and ethnic music from around the world, will present approximately 20 concerts, along with workshops and children’s events.”

• Intercultural Journeys – $1,666
“Intercultural Journeys is developing a series for the West Philadelphia communities called Sunday Evenings-Music for Contemplation. The musical performances represent a broad variety of musical and faith traditions.”

• Shakespeare in Clark Park – $2,969
“Shakespeare in Clark Park will present a professional outdoor theater production of a Shakespearean play at a free summertime cultural event that is accessible to the Clark Park neighborhood and the Greater Philadelphia area.”
 

Most of the 5,000 prisoners incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, will die there. Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the United States. Prisoners there have long sentences, virtually life sentences. West Philly-based photographer Lori Waselchuk released a book this summer documenting the prison’s inmate-run hospice program, which provides dying prisoners some comfort and dignity in their last days. You can talk to her about it this Sunday.

Waselchuk will sign her book, Grace Before Dying, and talk about the project as part of an event hosted by the West Philly-based non-profit Books Through Bars on Sunday, Oct. 16. Running from 2:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the A-Space (4722 Baltimore Ave.), the event will also feature quilts made by Angola inmates that are part of a traveling exhibit (now at Saint Joseph’s University) accompanying the Grace Before Dying project. Local quilters and textile artists will also be on hand to discuss their work.

The event ends with a screening of the documentary In the Land of the Free, which tells the story of Angola inmates Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, also known as the Angola 3, who between them spent almost a century in solitary confinement. Wallace and Woodfox are still in solitary after more than 37 years.

Here is a schedule for the event:

3:30 p.m. – Quilter’s Roundtable. Local quilters and textile artists will present their work.

5 p.m. – Reception

6 p.m. – Lori Waselchuk talk and book signing

7 p.m. – Screening of the In the Land of the Free

Don’t miss this pretty amazing exhibit at Green Line Cafe on Locust (4426 Locust Street). The cafe has launched the Screens ‘N’ Spokes art show that benefits multiple sclerosis research and the cycling team that promotes the cause.

The exhibition features a very cool selection of screen prints by a variety of North American artists who created their work especially for this cause. The prints can also be viewed and purchased on Etsy. All of the proceeds from the sales will go to the National MS Society.

Here is some more information on the Screens ‘N’ Spokes project and the people behind it.

On May 13, 1985, a Philadelphia Police Department helicopter dropped a bomb onto a row home at 6221 Osage Avenue, the headquarters of the group MOVE. Eleven people lost their lives, five of them children, and inexplicably, despite heavy fire department presence, 61 houses on the block burned to the ground.

Writer Andrea Walls grew up just blocks away from the bombing and witnessed its aftermath, and now, a quarter century later, she’s telling the story of that night into morning through her poetry. Walls’ chapbook, “Ultraviolet Catastrophe” examines the events from all sides, even at times transporting the reader into the mind of the helicopter pilot that dropped the bomb. With empathy, bravery and electric twists of phrase that speak to her project as both poet and witness, Walls brings light to this crucial moment in West Philadelphia history.

“Ultraviolet Catastrophe” was the first publication of Thread Makes Blanket press, a local small press operating out of the Cedar Park area, headed up by West Philly resident, writer, and creative writing professor Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela.  Most recently, the press also released “Letter from Tombs Prison, 1917,” a collection of writings surrounding correspondence between Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman that includes writing by Julie Herrada, Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela, Emily Abendroth, Anna Martine Whitehead, Shaun Slifer and Megan Gibes, as well as a reproduction of an original letter.

Now a Camden resident, Andrea Walls remains active in the Philadelphia literary arts scene and with the Leeway Foundation.  For more information about Andrea’s work, or Thread Makes Blanket Press or to buy “Ultraviolet Catastrophe,” click here or pick one up at the Queer Literary Festival on October 14-16.

– Emma