How to Pittsburgh This Weekend: September 25-27, 2026

The Black Pirate

Sunday, September 27 | The Lindsay Theater, Sewickley 

The Pirates’ season is over, but there’s another athletic buccaneer worth watching this weekend: Douglas Fairbanks, the swashbuckling star who practically invented the Hollywood action hero, starring in the 1926 classic The Black Pirate, which opens the Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival this Sunday.

Considered a landmark of early color cinema, Pirate was one of the first major Hollywood productions shot entirely in technicolor. The print being shown at The Lindsay Theater in Sewickley is the result of a recent restoration completed in 2024, which recreated Fairbanks’ original colors from surviving negatives.

When The Black Pirate premiered in 1926, its high-seas adventures were usually accompanied by live music. On Sunday, Pittsburgh’s Thoth Trio, a jazz threesome, will perform an original score as Fairbanks sails, swings, fights and flirts his way across the screen.