The Pittsburgh Film Office board released a 23-page study touting its mission and accomplishments yesterday, in advance of a face-off with critics seeking to reorganize the 16-year-old agency.

The report mainly drives home the agency's place as an economic development generator -- that it has leveraged $75 in regional spending from every dollar in government funding it has received since 1990 (or $268 million from its $3.5 million in total support).

A local group of film industry professionals called the Pittsburgh Film and Media Alliance has lately been criticizing the film agency, saying it has not been successful at wooing large productions to the region and should refocus on working with local filmmakers. They have also criticized the film office board for allowing the agency's director, Dawn Keezer, to move to Los Angeles.

The film office does help local filmmakers, Keezer told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board yesterday, but its first priority is its economic development.

"Local independent filmmaking plays an important role in this industry, but it's long term. It's how you build up your crew base, it's how you train your local vendors to work in the industry -- it's an art form, it's not economic development."

Keezer said the agency currently helps local filmmakers get through red tape -- such as securing bridge and street closures and filming permits and scouting for locations -- that surrounds movie productions, "but the place we don't help is we don't find them money. We're not in a position to take them to Los Angeles and introduce them to someone who can make their film for them. It's not what we do."

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato scheduled a meeting for today to air out differences between Film Office supporters and critics, but it has to be rescheduled due to Mayor Bob O'Connor's funeral.

The Pittsburgh Film Office is mostly funded by more than $220,000 in state grants. Keezer said it gets $120,000 from the state's film office; $50,000 each from state representatives Bill DeWeese, D-Waynesburg, and Frank Dermody, D-Oakmont; and smaller yearly grants from other Pittsburgh-area legislators.

The office's 14-member board held a special meeting yesterday morning, in advance of today's canceled meeting with Onorato. It added two new board members: gaffer and lighting director Bob Bender and David Haddad, who owns a truck rental company and has been on the board previously.

In July, the board approved Keezer's relocation to Los Angeles for a six-month trial period.

Since Pittsburgh has already received most of its 2006-07 film subsidies from the state -- $2 million for "Mysteries of Pittsburgh," from the state's $10 million film development fund -- board chairman Russ Streiner admitted it would be difficult for Keezer to land any more major productions to the city this year.

"We don't know exactly how to quantify success or failure" for Keezer while she is in Los Angeles, Streiner said, though the office is keeping a running tally of her meetings with Hollywood officials.