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Monday, 23 August 2010 10:15

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

Two years ago, Kristen Lauth Shaeffer and Andrew Halasz, filmmakers and college instructors, put out a call for short films. They had a $5,000 Sprout Fund grant and wanted treatments of 10-minute narratives of stories based in Pittsburgh neighborhoods for a 90-minute film they were calling "Greetings from Pittsburgh: Neighborhood Narratives."

It was part of Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary celebration and had several local screenings.

The DVDs cost $10 each, and the proceeds benefit Operation Safety Net, Pittsburgh Mercy Health System’s medical outreach to the homeless.

Visit

www.pghneighborhoodnarratives.com.

I liked all of the shorts to varying degrees -- set in Bloomfield, the Strip, the Hill, Lawrenceville, Oakland, Regent Square, Homestead, Mount Oliver, South Side and Downtown -- but the one that made me laugh so hard I cried was "Mombies," a send-up of zombie flicks, this one made by new parents Gabrielle Resnek and Sam Turich, who had moved to Lawrenceville from Brooklyn, N.Y. and started noticing a lot of ...

...strollers....

... I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

"Mombies" features two hipster women who are accosted and then pursued by zombie-like mothers pushing strollers. The scenes of one of them trying to climb over the iron fence at Allegheny Cemetery evokes the memories of Lucille Ball and Imogene Coca.

I've heard that convulsive laughter is good for your health, so "Mombies" might be recommended for those of us who don't easily muster laughter. (It doesn't grow on trees, y'know!)

Gaby tells me that "Mombies" has screened as an official selection at five festivals, including the San Francisco Independent FF, the Cleveland International FF, and the 11/20 FF in Vienna, Austria. It has also aired on WQED-TV.

Here’s the youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb6O3a4v8Bc

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