The 31st Cleveland International Film Festival was scheduled to open last night with "Swedish Auto," one of roughly 120 films that will screen until March 25. The event also will offer 110-plus shorts and 100 guest filmmakers.

For a list of films and information on tickets (you may want to line up some tickets ahead of time, since the festival's popularity has grown and sprouted long lines some days), go to clevelandfilm.org. Once in Cleveland, check the CIFF store in the lobby of Tower City Cinemas, where the movies are shown.

The festival is a program of the Cleveland Film Society, a not-for-profit arts and education organization.

Time magazine, in a 2006 story headlined "Film Festivals for the Rest of Us," noted that the Ohio event is renowned for its diversity and inclusiveness. It also confirmed that film festivals have exploded, from 100 in the early 1990s to more than 600 today.

Pittsburgh, of course, is the home of the popular Three Rivers Film Festival, which marked 25 years last fall and opened with Jeff Goldblum's "Pittsburgh."

We are the middle of the Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival and preparations are under way for Silk Screen, the second International Asian American Film and Music Festival. It will be May 11-20 and celebrate Asia and Asian American culture through film, music and dance.

The film lineup won't be ready until April, but organizers have scheduled three Pittsburgh concerts, and you can buy tickets for those -- $25 each -- along with an eight-ticket pass for $50, and red carpet gala, $60 each.

Go to silkscreenfestival.org for details on the concerts and more information about the festival.

Price cuts

It is not often that a movie chain announces it's cutting prices. In fact, the opposite is usually true. But the parent company of Showcase Cinemas West and North has reduced admission prices, at least for a while.

General admission is now $6, while bargain matinees, tickets for children 11 and under and senior citizens (60 and older) are $4. A select number of concession items have been cut to $2.

National Amusements, the parent company of the Showcase Cinemas, says the prices are in place for a limited time, which means they could go away by the start of the summer movie season. See national-amusements.com for details on these and other specials.

Return engagement

Pittsburgh Filmmakers is bringing "Man Push Cart" back for a few days later this month because the Harris Theater was closed by an ice storm and small flood during its previous run.

It will return to the Harris March 23-25. The 87-minute film is about a former Pakistani rock star who is humiliated when reduced to selling coffee and doughnuts from a street cart in Manhattan.