Is Fifteen The Philly Film Festival's Lucky Number?

Last night Phillyist attended the first of the three Evenings with the Curators of the 15th Philadelphia Film Festival that we told you about here, and we have to say, it was pretty exciting. Some of the stuff we learned: the festival is running from March 30th through April 11th, which is shorter and earlier than it's been in the past; this is in order to avoid all the religious holidays, and that most non-religious of non-holidays, tax day. The theaters involved will be a lot of the usual suspects (Ritz East, Ritz 5, the Prince Music Theater, the Bridge, the International House), plus one new surprise guest: the Cinema at Penn. What's the Cinema at Penn, you ask? You may remember it as the busted up, broken down, crappy old Cinemagic 3 theater, caddy corner from the Bridge at 40th and Walnut. The film festival folks are going to tear it up inside and rebuild it, leaving us with a beautiful new refurbished theater. Hooray!

Some statistics: this year's festival will include 230 films - 144 features and 86 shorts - from 41 different countries. 14 of the films will be screening for only the second time since their premiers at Sundance, and Festival Media Director Andrew Preis points out this means the festival is really moving up in the world in terms of prestige; it's now the "Sundance of the East!"

This year there are four films in a new "For the Family" program, and 11 in Cinema of the Muslim World. Travis Crawford says he has the strongest ever Danger After Dark program (which highlights popular, generally sci fi/horror, foreign films), featuring a bunch of crowd-pleasing films from many different countries, and with less of a focus on Asia than in the past. And Scott Johnston also thinks it's the best year yet for the festival of independents; he has a great bill of local and independent films.

We can look forward to funny Muslim films starring women; a film called Fuck which talks about the history, uses, and censorship of our favorite curse word, and which features animation from great talent and festival guest from previous years, Bill Plympton; a thrilling documentary - with a surprise, gasp-inducing ending - that's all about...crossword puzzles (Wordplay); a gory Australian film called Feed which programmer Travis Crawford declined to even describe for fear of making people sick; The Camden 28, about local members of the religious Left performing acts of terrorism to protest the Vietnam War - sounds like fiction, but it's a documentary; another doc that exposes the dark side of Philly politics by taking a close look at the 2003 Mayoral election (Shame of a City) - that should be loads of fun.