Pop-up film event coming to Monongahela
MONONGAHELA – A torpedo-shaped contraption rigged to stationary bicycles will be making its way Saturday to Monongahela, timed for the area’s sprawling flea market.
The bright yellow pedal projection machine named Hiding in Plain Sight was designed to self-power movies, and it will be used to draw attention to an event called Filmtique.
“It’s a cool thing,” said Chris McGinnis, arts director and chief curator at Rivers of Steel in Homestead.
“Hopefully this thing on the side of the road brings people in,” McGinnis said.
His nonprofit organization has rented a storefront at 205 W. Main St. where people who have old home movies they haven’t been able to watch can put them on a projector to watch them again. The group will have Super8 and 16mm film projectors available to screen the movies.
Rivers of Steel will bring some of its own movies to show that involve the history of the steel industry, he said.
The event will coincide with the popular Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce’s Fall Fleatique on the Mon from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday on Main Street in that city and in neighboring New Eagle.
The Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area was created by Congress in 1996 to tell the story of the steel industry that had collapsed in the Pittsburgh region by the 1980s.
A new initiative of the organization is the Mon Valley Creative Corridor, which involves the creation of pop-up events “to motivate people to go downtown for something interesting,” McGinnis said.
The yellow traveling movie theater was created by Stefan Gruber, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, as a way to pull people away from smartphones and motivate them to engage with each other.