Days and Nights in the Forest

Posted on February 23, 2026

Adapted from Sunil Gangopadhyay’s celebrated 1968 novel, Days and Nights in the Forest is one of director Satyajit Ray’s greatest achievements, a modern search for connection that conjures the timeless resonance of a folktale.

Desperate to flee Calcutta’s rat race, four friends, Ashim (Soumitra Chatterjee), Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee), Hari (Samit Bhanja), and Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh), drive to Palamu, one of India’s rural “tribal lands,” where they bribe a watchman into letting them stay at a sylvan guesthouse. Despite vowing to get away from it all, the crew soon mixes with the locals, including a woodland family: the soulful yet mischievous Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) takes to the overconfident Ashim, while her widowed sister-in-law Jaya (Kaberi Bose) grows closer to the bookish Sanjoy. At the same time, Hari, fresh off a break-up, woos a Santal girl named Duli (Simi Garewal); and Shekhar, despite his own penchant for gambling, tries to rein in his companions’ boozy hedonism.

Filled with some of Ray’s most indelible characterizations and lavish images (shot by longtime cinematographer Soumendu Roy), Days and Nights in the Forest touches on masculine vulnerabilities and Indian class divisions with the graceful complexity of a master at his peak.

Restored in 4K in 2025 by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Film Heritage Foundation in collaboration with Janus Films – The Criterion Collection at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the original camera and sound negatives provided by Purnima Dutta and the magnetic track preserved by BFI National Archive. Funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation. Special thanks to Wes Anderson and Sandip Ray.

Idiotka

Posted on February 23, 2026

Next season’s fashion victim, Idiotka, is coming to The Frida Cinema. Premiering at last year’s SXSW, it’s a hilarious send-up of the worlds of fashion and reality television.

In this sharp, irreverent comedy, a disgraced fashion designer with a dangerously low credit score, Margarita (Anna Baryshnikov) enters a reality show with a six-figure cash prize to save her babushka’s West Hollywood apartment. But as the competition intensifies, slick producer Nicol (Camila Mendes) pushes her to spin her family’s struggle into spectacle, forcing Margarita to decide whether to play along or take control of her own narrative, one unhinged look at a time.

Waiting for Guffman + A Mighty Wind Double Feature

Posted on February 21, 2026

Celebrate the life of the incomparable Catherine O’Hara with a pitch-perfect double feature of two mockumentary masterpieces: Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind.

Waiting for Guffman: An eccentric theatre troupe mounts an original musical to celebrate their town’s 150th anniversary, convinced a Broadway producer named Guffman may attend and launch them to stardom.

A Mighty Wind: Three aging 1960s folk acts reunite for a memorial concert honoring their late manager, forcing old bandmates, ex-lovers, and long-buried tensions back into harmony.

From the earnest community-theatre hopefuls of small town Missouri to the wistful harmonies of reunited folk legends, O’Hara brings her unique blend of generational comic instinct and the ability to deliver earnest, real moments to every beautifully misguided dreamer she inhabits. Whether she’s belting out a hometown anthem with unshakable conviction or navigating the fragile egos of aging troubadours, her genius always lied in making the absurd feel achingly human.

There will be a ten minute intermission between each film. One ticket gets you access to both movies!

Beetlejuice: Presented by OC Pride

Posted on February 16, 2026

In this house…if you’ve seen one ghost…you haven’t seen them all!

The Frida Cinema and OC Pride are teaming up to present a screening of Tim Burton’s 1988 ghoulish comedy Beetlejuice in honor of the late, great Catherine O’Hara!

As the gloriously pretentious, performance-artist-from-another-dimension Delia Deetz, O’Hara steals every scene she’s in, as she often did throughout her entire career. Her operatic commitment to absurdity turns Delia into one of cinema’s greatest comic creations, just one in a long list of characters she brought her immortal comic pulse to.

Burton’s film balances the macabre with the heartfelt in only a way that he could. Don’t miss a chance to see it on the big screen, one night only!

Just added: the icon, Isabella Xochitl, will be joining us before the screening to perform a pre-show number!

Defending Your Life: Presented by Flickrhappy

Posted on February 16, 2026

What if the afterlife isn’t halos and harps…but a courtroom?

Flickrhappy is back at The Frida Cinema to present a special one-off screening of writer/director Albert Brooks’ ingenious 1991 comedy Defending Your Life!

Is there love after death? After he dies suddenly, the hapless advertising executive Daniel Miller (Brooks) finds himself in Judgment City, a gleaming way station where the newly deceased must prove they lived a life of sufficient courage to advance in their journey through the universe. As the self-doubting Daniel struggles to make his case, a budding relationship with the uninhibited Julia (Meryl Streep) offers him a chance to finally feel alive.

Funny and unexpectedly profound, Defending Your Life blends sharp existential satire with genuine romantic warmth. With scene-stealing turns by Rip Torn and Lee Grant, and Brooks at his most vulnerable and witty, the film turns life’s biggest questions into something both hilarious and deeply human.

Join us for this unforgettable big-screen screening and discover why sometimes the only way forward…is to defend your life.

This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff. Flickrhappy is allowing Frida Cinema members to use their regular discounts to this event!

Death Perception

Posted on February 16, 2026

A group of college students attend a watch party for their friend’s newest independent film. The night takes a dark turn when a masked killer starts brutally killing the partygoers one at a time. With each death time resets and we see the events of the night through the eyes of the next attendee.

Amateur student filmmaker, Sean Davis, invites five friends over for the premiere of his overlong short film he made entirely on his own. Not only is Sean’s movie awful, but things just keep getting worse as the screening party attendees are stalked by a ruthless killer in a mask.

Over a single night, the mystery unfolds through the eyes of Wes, Mark, Kris, Anna, Peter, and Sean, changing between their distorted individual perspectives. With each perspective, more answers are revealed as characters generally live longer and see more than the last. Time resets over and over, seeing the party through all their perspectives. Plans go wrong, romance blossoms unexpectedly, the body count rises, and the Killer’s identity and motives are revealed. The subversive final perspective hilariously pays off everything set up in the previous ones.

This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Posted on February 9, 2026

Hey dude, this is no cartoon! We’re rolling out some encores of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1990!

Before superheroes ruled the multiplex, four brothers from the New York sewers saved the world with martial arts and heart. Director Steve Barron’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a box-office surprise and a practical-effects marvel. Produced on the edge of indie ingenuity, the film blended Jim Henson’s Creature Shop wizardry with street-level grit, creating a tone that felt mythic. Beneath the pizza jokes and wisecracks was something sincere…growing up in a hard (shelled?) city.

Leprechaun + Virtual Q&A w/ Mark Holton: Presented by Nostalgic Nebula

Posted on February 5, 2026

Your luck just ran out.

Celebrate St. Patrick’s day at The Frida Cinema with a special screening of Leprechaun, presented by our friends at Nostalgic Nebula! Arrive early for a retrospective pre-show video, Leprechaun trivia with prizes, a spooky photo op, chocolate gold coins! But beware of the Leprechaun…try as you may, try as you might, who steals his gold won’t live through the night!

As a special treat, there will be a tele-Q&A with actor Mark Holton at the start of the show, so prep those Leprechaun questions!

Dan O’Grady (Shay Duffin) steals 100 gold coins from a leprechaun (Warwick Davis) while on vacation in Ireland. The leprechaun follows him home, but Dan locks him in a crate, held at bay by a four-leaf clover. Ten years later, J.D. Redding (John Sanderford) and his daughter, Tory (Jennifer Aniston), rent O’Grady’s property for the summer. When their new neighbors accidentally release the leprechaun, he goes on a murderous rampage to reclaim his gold.

Doors open and pre-show begins at 7:15PM! Movie and Q&A starts at 7:30PM!

This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff.

Tiger on the Beat

Posted on January 30, 2026

“Like Lethal Weapon only far funnier and with more chainsaw action.” -Total DVD

After so much emotion and violence, we are choosing to close our Hong Kong Action Essentials series by cutting loose with little bit laughter and…uhhh…more violence.

Directed by Lau Kar-leung and starring Chow Yun-fat, Tiger on the Beat follows a pair of mismatched cops on the trail of a violent drug dealer, a case that escalates from street-level comedy into something far more savage and unhinged. What begins as a rambunctious action/comedy steadily sheds its humor, morphing into a full-throttle collision of gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, and sheer physical excess. By the time it reaches its infamous finale, the film has abandoned restraint entirely, delivering the perfectly brutal and messy ending to our series.

Our Hong Kong Action Essentials series explores the time from the mid-’80s through the early ’90s, where Hong Kong filmmakers rewrote the grammar of action cinema forever. Directors like John Woo, Tsui Hark, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam, and Lau Kar-Leung fused balletic gunplay, risky stunts, martial arts virtuosity, and raw emotional intensity into a new cinematic language that would be oft-imitated but never replicated. (sorry, The Matrix, we love you too!) Join us every month in 2026 as we explore this golden age where style and emotion collided to change movies forever.

Police Story + Police Story 2 Double Feature

Posted on January 30, 2026

Witness action cinema pushed to its absolute physical limits with Police Story + Police Story, a double featuring Jackie Chan, the filmmaker-performer who redefined what a movie star would risk for the camera.

A smash hit that made him a worldwide icon of daredevil action spectacle, the director/star/one-man stunt machine plays Ka-Kui, a Hong Kong police inspector who goes rogue to bring down a drug kingpin and protect the case’s star witness (Chinese cinema legend Brigitte Lin) from retribution. Packed wall-to-wall with charmingly goofball slapstick and astoundingly acrobatic fight choreography, including an epic shopping-mall melee of flying fists and shattered glass, Police Story set a new standard for rock-’em-sock-’em mayhem.

Then, after a quick ten minute intermission, Jackie is back! Having been demoted to a lowly traffic cop for his, ahem, unorthodox policing methods, Chan’s go-it-alone officer Ka-Kui quits the force in protest. But it isn’t long before he’s back in action, racing the clock to stop a band of serial bombers and win back his much-put-upon girlfriend May (the phenomenal Maggie Cheung, reprising her star-making role). Boasting epic explosions, an awesomely 1980s electro soundtrack, and a showstopping finale that turns an abandoned warehouse into a life-size pinball machine of cascading oil drums, collapsing scaffolds, and shooting fireworks, Police Story 2 confirmed Chan’s status as a performer of unparalleled grace and daring.

There will be a ten minute intermission between each film. One ticket gets you access to both movies!