Birthday Party

An honest exploration of one Pennsylvania factory worker's mundane existence, and his pursuit of a love long lost.

A portrait of a wiry, engaging street hustler, Sal Carulli, whose cocky patter breaks down at the end of the film, when he visits his father’s grave.

Documentary released with Second Sight Films' Dawn of the Dead restoration featuring John Amplas, Roy Frumkes, Tom Savini, Christine Forrest, Tom Dubensky, Tony Buba, Taso Stavrakis and a whole host of zombies and bikers.

This documentary focuses on the Civil Rights Movement in the heavily segregated steel industry and its equally segregated union, The United Steelworkers of America (USWA), at the time when this industry—devastated by mismanagement and global competition—began to crumble. It is a powerful picture of black working-class life in the latter part of the 20th century, told in a combination of interviews and documentary footage. Through live testimonials and revelatory archival materials, Struggles shows the contributions of African Americans to the steel industry and to the labor movement more generally. (via cinema.indiana.edu)

During an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter, and his television-executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall.

Tony Buba, a film maker from Braddock, Pennsylvania, tells the story of his hometown's decline (along with the rest of the steel mill towns along the Monongahela River) while he dreams of making higher budget films. The picture documents, in a lighthearted way, the community anxiety and activism that accompanied the failure of the steel industry around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A trip inside a Steel Valley workers’ magazine, which looks like raw material for a Bruce Springsteen song.

A young man, convinced he's a vampire, goes to live with his elderly and hostile cousin in a small Pennsylvanian town, where he tries to suppress his bloodlust.

A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.

Buba introduces us to a Braddock entrepreneur who has failed at twelve businesses and is busy teaching would-be entrepreneurs self-confidence.

Behind The Scenes with DAY OF THE DEAD featurette from the original Anchor Bay DVD.

An account of a 1975 independent truckers strike.

Ghosts of Amistad by Tony Buba is based on Marcus Rediker's The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (Penguin, 2012). It chronicles a journey to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the rebels who captured the slave schooner Amistad, to interview elders about local memory of the incident, and to search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began. The filmmakers rely on the knowledge of villagers, fishermen, and truck drivers to recover a lost history from below in the struggle against slavery, and to explore the African origins of the heroes of the Amistad incident.

A look into traditional sausage making.

Tony Buba trains his documentary lens on the washing of his 87-year-old grandmother’s kitchen walls, an annual ritual. While the filmmaker works diligently and mostly out of sight of the camera, his grandmother anchors the piece, recounting stories of her immigration from Italy in the 1940s, her first impressions of the United States, and her endearing love of Braddock.

A short film featuring images of his grandfather’s just-demolished shoe-repair shop in 1972