When its original home base, the International House, was sold in 2019, the center was saved by UArts.
The Lightbox had been based at UArts, in the former Gershman Y building at 401 S. Broad St., since late 2019. Before that, the program had been at the International House in West Philadelphia since 1970, although it only took on the Lightbox Film Center name in 2017. When International House was sold in 2019, the theater’s future was briefly uncertain until UArts
Scheduled events have been canceled, including a June 6 premiere of the Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Community program (which will now take placePires started working part-time at what was then Film at International House in the 1990s when he was a Temple undergraduate. He has worked at Lightbox full-time since 2004, moving with it to UArts.
The Lightbox has risen from the prospect of near-death once before. Could it rise again and set up shop elsewhere?