City Lights, the most cherished film by Charlie Chaplin, is also his ultimate Little Tramp chronicle. The writer-director-star achieved new levels of grace, in both physical comedy and dramatic poignancy, with this silent tale of a lovable vagrant falling for a young blind woman who sells flowers on the street (a magical Virginia Cherrill) and mistakes him for a millionaire.
Though this Depression-era smash was made after the advent of sound, Chaplin remained steadfast in his love for the expressive beauty of the pre-talkie form. The result was the epitome of his art and the crowning achievement of silent comedy.
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Charlie Chaplin was already an international star when he decided to break out of the short-film format and make his first full-length feature–The Kid. The movie doesn’t merely show Chaplin at a turning point, when he proved that he was a serious film director—it remains an expressive masterwork of silent cinema.
In it, he stars as his lovable Tramp character, this time raising an orphan (a remarkable young Jackie Coogan) he has rescued from the streets. Chaplin and Coogan make a miraculous pair in this nimble marriage of sentiment and slapstick, a film that is, as its opening title card states, “a picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear.”
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Charlie Chaplin’s comedic masterwork—which charts a prospector’s search for fortune in the Klondike and his discovery of romance (with the beautiful Georgia Hale)—The Gold Rush–forever cemented the iconic status of Chaplin and his Little Tramp character. We are celebrating its 100th anniversary with a five film retrospective of Chaplin’s work over the November 28th-3oth weekend!
Shot partly on location in the Sierra Nevadas and featuring such timeless gags as the dance of the dinner rolls and the meal of boiled shoe leather, The Gold Rush is an indelible work of heartwarming hilarity. Our friends at Janus Films have granted us the rights to Chaplin’s definitive 1942 version, for which the director added new music and narration.
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Michael Powell’s (of the iconic directorial duo Powell & Pressburger) deeply disturbing Peeping Tom is coming to The Frida Cinema in a brand new restoration from Rialto Pictures!
Loner Mark Lewis works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he’s making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen, the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making.
When Peeping Tom premiered in 1960, British critics savaged it. The film was immediately branded “vile,” “depraved,” and “disgusting.” 55 years later, it’s one of the most influential (and cleverly shot) thrillers ever made.
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The rarely screened Four Nights of a Dreamer is Robert Bresson’s great forgotten masterpiece, a stark yet haunting ode to romantic idealism and the capriciousness of love. We are presenting it in a brand new 4K restoration via our friends at Janus Films!
Adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “White Nights,” Four Nights follows Jacques (Guillaume des Forêts), a lonely artist who roams bohemian Paris in search of the girl of his dreams. One night he saves a beautiful young woman, Marthe, from plunging into the Seine in despair over her rejection by an avoidant lover (Maurice Monnoyer). Jacques compassionately attempts to reunite Marthe with her beau, but his feelings for his new friend soon become less than platonic and his investment in her personal drama far from selfless.
Four Nights of a Dreamer has been called the French master’s “loveliest” work: with his signature minimalism, Bresson films the shimmering beauty of nocturnal Paris as it enfolds his characters in endless possibility—subtly capturing the wonder of unexpected connection and the mystery of fate.
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As a tribute to the late, great Diane Keaton, we are presenting one of her most striking and under-sung performances in Warren Beatty’s sweeping 1981 epic Reds.
Told on an operatic scale, Reds chronicles the real-life romance between radical journalist John Reed (Beatty) and writer-feminist Louise Bryant (Keaton), set against the turbulence of early-20th-century revolution. While history remembers Reed as the author of Ten Days That Shook the World, it’s Keaton’s Louise who anchors the film—unwilling to live in anyone’s shadow.
Shot with the grandeur of classic Hollywood and the intimacy of a love letter, Reds earned Beatty an Academy Award for Best Director and Keaton a Best Actress nomination, cementing her as more than the quirky icon of Annie Hall. Here she is–resolute and radiant forever.
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She’s not messy. She’s busy! To celebrate new films coming out this year from directors Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, we are presenting our favorite collaboration between them–the 21st century masterpiece Frances Ha!
Frances is a 27-year-old New Yorker chasing her dream of becoming a dancer long after the world has stopped applauding. When her best friend and roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner) moves out, Frances stumbles through a series of apartments, odd jobs, and almost-romances in a city that both resists and reshapes her.
Shot in luminous monochrome and pulsing with French New Wave energy, Frances Ha is funny and quietly profound—a portrait of creative uncertainty and the friendships that carry us through it. Baumbach and Gerwig co-wrote the film with such honesty and rhythm that every awkward conversation feels so horrifyingly alive.
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Celebrate 20 years of Joe Wright’s iconic romantic classic Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfayden, Rosamund Pike, and Carey Mulligan!
A story of love and life among the landed English gentry during the Georgian era. Mr. Bennet is a gentleman living in Hertfordshire with his overbearing wife and five daughters, but if he dies their house will be inherited by a distant cousin whom they have never met, so the family’s future happiness and security is dependent on the daughters making good marriages.
A sweeping, sun-dappled reinvention of Jane Austen’s beloved novel that redefined period romance for a new generation, Pride & Prejudice is more popular and beloved than ever!
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From acclaimed director Lee Chang-dong (Poetry, Secret Sunshine) comes Burning, our first Volunteer Of The Month pick for November, thanks to our friend Eugene!
When aimless delivery worker Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) reconnects with a spirited young woman from his past (Jeon Jong-seo), their brief spark is interrupted by the arrival of Ben (Steven Yeun), her wealthy and enigmatic new friend. What begins as a quiet love triangle unfolds into a haunting mystery of class, longing, and the invisible rage simmering beneath modern life.
Adapted from a Haruki Murakami short story, Burning builds its tension like a fever dream. With its stunning performances an an ending that ignited endless debate, it’s a masterwork of ambiguity and unease.
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Our final Volunteer Of The Month pick was picked by Emma, as she has chosen Orson Welles’s singular adaptation of Franz Kafka’s chilling The Trial!
When bank clerk Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is arrested on his thirtieth birthday—never told what he’s charged with, never shown his accusers—his attempt at normal life fractures into a surreal labyrinth of law offices, dark corridors, and anonymous verdicts. The law doesn’t need to explain itself, and neither does Welles’ camera—it obsesses over angles, shadows, and the hollowness of bureaucracy.
With its stark black-and-white visuals, towering architecture, and a sense of dread that feels both grand and intimate, The Trial is Welles’ most personal film—a nightmare built not for a moment, but for an eternity.
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