From Chinese filmmaker Diao Yinan (Black Coal, Thin Ice), The Wild Goose Lake is a sleek, moody neo-noir that is headlining our Lost Films Of Covid series.
The story follows a gangster that ends up making a mistake that causes every gun on both sides of the law to point at him. While on the run, he comes across a mysterious woman who might get him out of trouble or make things worse.
The Wild Goose Lake is a fatalist love sotry that’s also a portrait of outcasts looking for a way out in a city that won’t stop closing in. Back in 2020, we streamed it online at our website during lockdown. But now is finally the time to see it on the big screen.
Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series.
Read More
Our series on the Lost Films Of Covid is moving on to American auteur Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, a small story with an enormous heart.
In the rough Oregon Territory of the 1820s, a skilled cook and a Chinese immigrant form an unlikely partnership — baking sweet cakes with stolen milk and daring to imagine a better life.
Shot with Reichardt’s signature patience and intimacy, First Cow finds poetry in the fleeting bonds of survival. Five years after theaters went quiet, it’s a reminder that history isn’t written by conquerors, but by those who share what little they have.
Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series.
Read More
A few years before winning multiple Oscars, filmmaker Sean Baker, like everyone else, was battling with releasing a film around the time of Covid. Our Lost Films Of Covid series is bringing back his 2021 wild ride through the backroads of Texas, Red Rocket, to the big screen.
Simon Rex stars as a washed-up adult film actor returning to his Texas hometown with big talk, no plan, and a knack for burning every bridge he crosses. Just as tensions begin to ease, he becomes infatuated with a young doughnut shop worker named Strawberry.
Shot on 16mm with Baker’s signature energy and empathy, Red Rocket captures the beauty and absurdity of people chasing something—anything—to keep going. Five years later, it plays like a snapshot of a country still struggling to sell The American Dream.
Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series.
Read More
Our Lost Films Of Covid series kicks off with Pig, one of those rare films that still found light in a time of theaters going dark.
Michael Sarnoski’s elegy of grief and grace follows a reclusive truffle hunter (Nicolas Cage, in one of his most effecting performances) as he searches for his stolen pig. The tagline is simple, but the story is so much more than revenge and spectacle. Returning to the big screen, it reminds us how cinema helps us feel human again.
Whether you’ve seen it since its release or have been waiting to watch it, come see Pig where it belongs–up on the big screen!
Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series.
Read More
The past, present, and future. One man’s dreams…for every dreamer. We are concluding our fourteen film retrospective paying tribute to the great Akira Kurosawa with his surrealist masterpiece Dreams.
Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.
Dreams holds a unique place in Akira Kurosawa’s career and reputation. It’s often regarded as one of his most personal and spiritual works–a literal painting of his imagination come to life. Don’t miss a chance to see it on the big screen!
Read More
Akira Kurosawa’s Palme d’Or-winning feudal epic, Kagemusha, is screening for the first time ever at The Frida Cinema.
It’s the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.
Don’t miss this rarely-screened gem on the big screen!
Read More
Akira Kurosawa’s three hour epic, Red Beard, is screening at The Frida Cinema with a brand new 4K restoration via our friends at Janus Films!
Red Beard chronicles the tumultuous relationship between an arrogant young doctor and a compassionate clinic director. Toshiro Mifune, in his last role for Kurosawa, gives a powerhouse performance as the dignified yet empathic director who guides his pupil to maturity, teaching the embittered intern to appreciate the lives of his destitute patients. Perfectly capturing the look and feel of 19th-century Japan, Kurosawa weaves a fascinating tapestry of time, place, and emotion.
Read More
A brand new 4K restoration of High And Low is coming to The Frida Cinema as part of fourteen film retrospective on the films of Akira Kurosawa! Thank you to Janus Films for restoring this masterpiece and allowing us to play it.
The story of High And Low follows an executive of a Yokohama shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom.
This highly influential domestic drama, adapted Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.
Read More
We’re kicking off February with a Samurai double feature of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Sanjuro, both screening with brand new 4K restorations courtesy of the incredible talents at Janus Films!
Yojimbo: A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.
Sanjuro: Jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan’s evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a “proper” samurai on its ear. Less brazen in tone than its predecessor but equally entertaining, this classic character’s return is a masterpiece in its own right.
Read More
Akira Kurosawa kicked off the 1960s with his underrated film noir piece The Bad Sleep Well, screening at The Frida Cinema as part of our ongoing retrospective on the works of the legendary Japanese director.
The story is simple: a vengeful young man marries the daughter of a corrupt industrialist in order to seek justice for his father’s suicide. What follows is a film that combines elements of Hamlet and noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan.
Continuing his legendary collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, The Bad Sleep Well is a lesser-known stroke of genius in the filmmaker’s canon, but great nonetheless. See it on the big screen, where it rarely plays!
Read More
