Taiwanese film Baby Steps (滿月酒) at ReelQ Film Festival, October 15.

The 2014 Taiwanese film Baby Steps (滿月酒) will play at the Harris Theater on October 15 as part of the ReelQ: Pittsburgh Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. The film's official site tells more about the movie:

Baby Steps is a Taiwan-US co-production, produced by Oscar-winning producer Li-Kong Hsu (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman) and Stephen Israel (Swimming With Sharks, G.B.F., I Do). Baby Steps received Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access production grant in 2014 as well as support from Taiwan Ministry of Culture and the City of Taipei.

Logline: Danny, a Taiwanese-American man, and his boyfriend Tate, long to have a baby, but the journey becomes more complicated by Danny’s well-intentioned but meddlesome mother who wants to control every aspect of the process from Taipei.

The movie starts at 7:30 and will be in English and Mandarin with occasional English subtitles. Tickets are $9 for general admission and $6 for students, and can be purchased online. The ReelQ Film Festival runs from October 9 through 17 at the Harris Theater in Pittsburgh's Cultural District (map).

"Understanding the Global Appeal of Japanese Popular Culture" at Pitt, October 9.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will host Hendrix College President William M. Tsutsui and his lecture "Understanding the Global Appeal of Japanese Popular Culture" on Friday, October 9.

The rising international prominence of Japanese popular culture—from manga and anime to sushi and Hello Kitty—is something that has been hard to ignore over the past quarter century. But why have global audiences responded so enthusiastically to Japanese entertainment products, and what cultural, social, and economic factors have contributed to the riotous creativity of Japanese pop since World War II?

It is the first event in the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies Conference at the University of Pittsburgh from October 9 through 11. The event is free and open to the public, and guests do not have to be registered for the conference to attend. The lecture runs from 2:00 to 3:30 pm in 1500 Posvar Hall (map).

OCA Free Medical Clinic (with Chinese language interpretation) at UPMC Montefiore Hospital, October 12.

The Pittsburgh branch of the OCA, formerly known as the Organization of Chinese Americans, is hosting a free medical clinic at UPMC Montefiore Hospital in Oakland (map) on Monday, October 12. According to the event's Facebook page: "The OCA Free Medical Clinic is a screening clinic. We provide free medical consultation and Chinese language interpretation."

"Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language Workshop: Chinese Language Teacher Preparation for the Global Era" at Pitt, October 9.

The University of Pittsburgh's School of Education will host Sue-mei Wu and her workshop "Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language Workshop: Chinese Language Teacher Preparation for the Global Era" on Friday, October 9. Dr. Wu is a Teaching Professor of Chinese Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. The event is free and open to the public in 5130 Posvar Hall (map) from 3:30 to 5:00 pm.

"Enhancing Chinese EFL Learners’ Awareness of Lexical Style" colloquium at Pitt, October 2.

The University of Pittsburgh's Department of Linguistics will host Dr. Guangwei Chen and his talk "Enhancing Chinese EFL Learners’ Awareness of Lexical Style" on October 2. The talk is free and open to the public in room G-13 of the Cathedral of Learning (map) from 3:00 pm.

New Hong Kong movies Saving Mr. Wu (解救吾先生), Lost in Hong Kong (港囧) at AMC Loews Waterfront, from October 2.

Two new Hong Kong movies---Saving Mr. Wu (解救吾先生) and Lost in Hong Kong (港囧)---will play at AMC Loews Waterfront from October 2.

The Hollywood Reporter provides a synopsis of the former, starring Andy Lau and Liu Ye and based on the 2004 kidnapping of actor Wu Ruofu:

On a Lunar New Year holiday evening in Beijing, Hong Kong actor referred to only as Mr. Wu (Andy Lau) is rousted by police outside a Chaoyang district restaurant. He’s just finished celebrating a deal for his next movie when an unidentified squad tells him his car has been connected to a hit and run, and would he please come to the station. Unconvinced of their legitimacy Wu "resists" arrest, gets hustled into a car and whisked away. He’s been kidnapped. His captors, led by the sometimes cackling, probably unstable Zhang Hua (Wang Qingyuan, The Crossing) and who have a second hostage, anonymous and — worse for him, working class — Xiao Dou (Cai Lu), are collecting ransoms in order to fund a much larger, more ambitious robbery. While awaiting their 3 million yuan (about $450,000 U.S.) payout, Zhang slips up when he goes to see his girlfriend Chenchen (Li Meng, The Golden Era, the only woman with a speaking part) and promptly gets scooped up by the cops investigating the abduction, Xing Feng (Ding regular Liu Ye, The Last Supper) and Cao Gang (Wu Ruofu, the real victim from 2004). Cue the cat and mouse word games between Xing and Zhang as the police scour the city looking for Wu.

And a September 24 Los Angeles Times review on the latter, which opened in China on September 25 and became the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time there.:

"Lost in Hong Kong" follows 2010's "Lost on Journey" and 2012's "Lost in Thailand," one of the all-time top-grossing blockbusters in its native China. Connected to its predecessors only thematically, the new film has director-star Xu Zheng embarking on yet another action-packed misadventure. Only this time, Xu's character must babysit an exasperating man-child — a Looney Tunes character personified —played by Bao Bei'er instead of Wang Baoqiang from the previous installments.

Xu plays Xu Lai, a henpecked brassiere designer who's barely putting up with the overbearing clan of wife Cai Bo (Vicki Zhao) on family vacation in Hong Kong. His ulterior motive is to reunite with the one that got away: college sweetheart Yang Yi (Du Juan), an accomplished artist who is set to open a solo show in Hong Kong. Problem is, Xu's aspiring documentarian brother-in-law, Cai Lala (Bao), insists on tagging along everywhere he goes to record his every move.

Tickets and showtimes are available at the AMC Loews Waterfront website. The theater is located at 300 West Waterfront Dr. in the Waterfront shopping complex in Homestead (map), across the Monongahela River from Greenfield, Squirrel Hill, and the rest of Pittsburgh.

Tora-san Meets the Songstress Again (a.k.a., Tora-san's Rise and Fall, 男はつらいよ 寅次郎相合い傘) at Maridon Museum, October 1.

The Maridon Museum wll show the 1975 comedy Tora-san Meets the Songstress Again (a.k.a., Tora-san's Rise and Fall, 男はつらいよ 寅次郎相合い傘) as the second installment in this fall's Japanese film series.

Hong Kong, Miyazaki films coming to Row House Cinema in December.

The Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville has announced two film series in December: "France vs Hong Kong New Wave" from the 4th through 10th, and "Hayao Miyazaki" from the 11th through 17th. The former will include The Killer (喋血雙雄) and Fallen Angels (墮落天使), in addition to two French films. The latter, four Miyazaki films: My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind< (風の谷のナウシカ), Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫), and Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し). Showtimes and ticket information will come later.

The theater is located at 4115 Butler Street (map).

"Voyage to Vietnam: Celebrating the Tet Festival" at Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, October 17.

The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh will host "Celebrating the Tet Festival" on Sunday, October 17, as the opening day in its Voyage to Vietnam exhibit.

Discover the beauty, sights, and sounds of Vietnam through the lens of Tet, the most important celebration of the year, in this interactive exhibition. Dress up in customaryAo Daiand pose for an interactive family photo. Try on a giant lion head and make and launch a fireworks display to signal the culmination of the celebration. Visitors will gain appreciation for the traditions, values, and daily experiences of people who live in Vietnam, and discover similarities and differences among the lives of children in the U.S. and in Vietnam

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The touring exhibit, currently in San Jose, will be in Pittsburgh from October 17 through January 17, 2016. The Freeman Foundation Asian Culture Exhibit Series website provides an overview:

Through the interactive experiences and programming of Voyage to Vietnam, children soak up the essence of Tết—its sights, sounds, stories, textures and experiences. Providing multiple entry points for visitors of all ages to engage personally in authentic Vietnamese culture, Voyage to Vietnam will be scalable from 924 sq.ft. to1,500 sq.ft. to accommodate venues with varying capacity. The exhibit will incorporate Vietnamese-inspired materials, color palette, and an immersive marketplace experience with elements such as bamboo, fabric, umbrellas, plank bed and scripts and fonts that evoke modern Vietnamese calligraphy. Fabrication strategies include using banners rather than painted walls; video backdrops as set-pieces, digital narratives demonstrating cultural practices, and collapsible steel “carts” for shipping the exhibit, reducing the crate storage for the exhibit’s square footage.

"Celebrating the Tet Festival" runs from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh is located at 10 Children's Way on the North Side (map). Admission is $14 for adults and $13 for seniors and for children aged 2 to 18.

Documentary The Look of Silence free at Parkway Theater, October 2 and 3.

Citing poor attendance at August showings of the film, the Parkway Theater in McKees Rocks will show the 2014 documentary The Look of Silence for free on October 2 and 3. A synopsis of the documentary on the Indonesian killings of 1965 and 1966, via the film's website:

Through [director Joshua] Oppenheimer's footage of the perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered, as well as the identities of the killers. The documentary focuses on the youngest son, an optometrist named Adi, who decides to break the suffocating spell of submission and terror by doing something unimaginable in a society where the murderers remain in power: he confronts the men who killed his brother and, while testing their eyesight, asks them to accept responsibility for their actions. This unprecedented film initiates and bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.

On September 3, the theater posted on Facebook that a total of 11 people saw the film during the initial eight screenings there.

The Friday, October 2 showing will be at 7:00 pm, and the October 3rd showing at 5:45 pm. The theater is located at 644 Broadway Ave. in McKees Rocks (map), a few miles west of the North Side.