Love, Brooklyn is about Brooklynite writer assigned with writing a piece on the borough’s renaissance post-COVID. With his work deadline looming, he bikes around the borough, and at the same navigates the complexities of intertangled relationships in his life, including with: Casey (Nicole Beharie), his gallerist ex-girlfriend whom he is trying to remain friends with and who is dealing with her own professional deadlines; Nicole (DeWanda Wise), his new situationship who is a recent widow and new single mother studying to be a massage therapist; and Alan (Roy Wood Jr.), his best friend who is increasingly interested in cheating on his wife. Like Brooklyn itself, our characters are at moments in their lives where they need to leap forward while also needing to hold onto the pasts that have shaped them.
Premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Love, Brooklyn is a deeply romantic film, focusing on the connections of these characters and how they choose to operate within a changing world, both individually and together. The film’s tone is remarkably lovely in a way that we so rarely get to see from romantic dramas.
The film is the debut feature from filmmaker Rachael Abigail Hodler, and a large part of her intention in achieving this tone was to tell a story of Black people that isn’t seeped in tragedy. As she put it in her director’s statement from the film’s Sundance press notes: “As a filmmaker, I want to tell stories about sensitive Black people who cry and feel, in life not tragic or saccharine… I hope to expand the representation of what it means to be Black and what’s cool about this moment of inclusion in storytelling is that I don’t have to try to represent Blackness as a whole or all Black people. I can be really specific with how I see people, how they love, hide from love and ultimately show up for it. I want to show the soft parts of the people who look like me. I want to show the sensitive bits that show up, not when we are in danger or inferior but when we are in love.”
Read More
This screening is open to Film Club Members only.
To learn more about the Frida Film Club or become a member, click here!
In anticipation of our upcoming run of the new 4K Restoration of visionary French filmmaker Leos Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge (Sept 12 – 18), we are pleased to treat our Film Club Members with a rare opportunity to experience his 1986 masterpiece Mauvais sang (Bad Blood) on the big screen!
In a near-future Paris, residents are gripped with fear by a mysterious sexually transmitted plague. A dying gangster enlists young thief Alex (Denis Lavant) to steal the serum that could mean humanity’s salvation. Caught between underworld rivalries, the shadow of his late father, and the suffocating weight of expectation, Alex navigates a landscape of danger and deceit that becomes even more complicated when he encounters Anna (Juliette Binoche), the much younger mistress of his employer, sparking a chain of events that threaten both their lives.
A stylish and surreal blend of crime drama, romantic fable, and pop-art cinematic poetry, Carax’s 1986 award-winner is a feverish meditation on love, risk, and mortality that cemented him as one of cinema’s great modern romantics.
Read More
Leos Carax’s delirious saga The Lovers On The Bridge is coming to The Frida Cinema in a brand new 4K restoration!
The story traces the highs and lows of the passionate relationship that develops between a homeless artist (Juliette Binoche) who is losing her sight and a troubled, alcoholic street performer (Denis Lavant) living on Paris’s famed Pont-Neuf bridge. Capturing their romantic abandon with a giddy expressionist energy—especially in a wild dance sequence set against an explosion of fireworks— this whirlwind love story is an exhilarating journey through a relationship that confirmed Carax’s status as one of the leading lights of the post–New Wave French cinema.
This 4K restoration was carried out by TransPerfect Media from the original 35mm film negative and multi tracks. Color grading supervised by Caroline Champetier, sound by Thomas Guader. Project supervised by Sophie Boyer, Jean Pierre Boiget and the StudioCanal team. Digitization and restoration done with the support of the CNC and the participation of Theo Films.
Read More
Greenwhich Entertainment’s newest release, Went Up The Hill, is coming to The Frida Cinema!
In this chilling ghost story, a recently deceased woman haunts her estranged son Jack (Dacre Montgomery of Stranger Things) and her grieving widow Jill (Vicky Krieps of Phantom Thread and Corsage). When the woman’s spirit inhabits the survivors, the living must grapple with the destruction she left behind while fighting for their own survival.
Went Up The Hill debuted earlier this year at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Read More
We’ve added some encores of White Christmas—the 1954 spectacle that wraps up the holiday season in a little bit of the ole showbiz razzle-dazzle!
Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are war buddies turned song-and-dance men, teaming up with the talented Haynes sisters (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen) to save a struggling Vermont inn—and the spirit of the general who once led them through war. What follows is a mix of backstage musical and holiday heart-warmer, decked out in dazzling costumes, toe-tapping numbers, and Irving Berlin’s iconic score (yes, that “White Christmas”).
Directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) and drenched in the glow of early VistaVision, this is comfort cinema at its finest.
Read More
Our Classic Movie Nights series takes a delightful detour into Screwball Country with Ernst Lubitsch’s final completed film, the effervescent Cluny Brown!
Jennifer Jones is Cluny—a spirited, plumber-loving young woman whose knack for bursting social bubbles gets her sent off to service in a country manor. There, she collides with Charles Boyer’s dashing, penniless intellectual hiding from the Nazis (as one does), and the result is a whip-smart satire wrapped in romantic whimsy. Lubitsch, the master of sophisticated comedy, skewers British class structures with his trademark light touch and sly innuendo, delivering laughs with a wink and wisdom with a smile.
Not quite a romance, not quite a farce, Cluny Brown is a story about people who don’t quite fit—but maybe fit each other perfectly.
Make sure to get to the screening early, as our Marketing Director Bekah will be doing a very informative and entertaining presentation on the film before it starts!
Read More
November’s Hallucinations screening is Isao Fujisawa’s lost wonder Bye Bye Love!
Lost and nihilistic drifter Utamaro chances upon Giko, a femme shoplifter who immediately catches his eye. One thing leads to another: the couple soon find themselves on the lam for murder. This provides for a delightful pretext to explore notions of societal malaise, free love and gender fluidity in a rapidly evolving 1970s Japan, as both Utamaro and Giko begin to know each other on the road by way of a variety of surrealistic, psychedelic and frank sexual encounters.
Hosted by Polygon’s editor-in-chief Chris Plante, Hallucinations is a monthly event that spotlights movies that challenge our expectations of story, style, and “good taste”. We invite guests to bond over films that change what we expect from the medium, the world, and themselves. So come early, stay late, make friends, and watch something strange, surprising, or just shamelessly sick.
Read More
As if! It’s been 30 years since Cher Horowitz first schooled us in the art of high school survival—and we’re celebrating it in style: with a special screening of the 1995 classic plus a bonus double feature of Amy Heckerling and Alicia Silverstone’s Vamps from 2012! And as a bonus bonus, Griffin Newman (“Griffin” on the Blank Check Podcast and “Watto” on The George Lucas Talk Show) will be in the house to introduce BOTH films!
Amy Heckerling’s Clueless remains the ultimate ’90s teen comedy: sharp, stylish, and endlessly quotable. Follow Cher, Dionne, and the gang through Beverly Hills’ hallways and malls as they navigate friendship, fashion, and, of course, the quest to find the perfect date.
Vamps is about two bloodsucking party girls (Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter) find their destinies at stake when one falls for the son of a vampire hunter and the other encounters a long-ago love.
One ticket gets you access to both films and there will be a 15 minute intermission between them. Don’t miss this pairing on the big screen with a rowdy crowd!
Read More
Celebrate Silent Film Day with our friends at Flickrhappy as they present a 100th anniversary screening of The Freshman! And as an added bonus, Suzanne Lloyd, granddaughter of silent comedy legend Harold Lloyd, will be joining us in-person to introduce the film and share rare insights into her grandfather’s life and legacy! Adding even more to the magic, renowned silent film composer and pianist Cliff Retallick will provide live musical accompaniment.
Harold Lloyd’s biggest box office hit and still one of the most beloved comedies of the silent era, The Freshman follows Harold Lloyd as an eager college freshman who dreams of being a big man on campus, though his careful plans inevitably go hilariously awry. But he gets a climactic chance to prove his mettle and impress the sweet girl he loves in one of the most famous sports sequences ever filmed.
Don’t miss this chance to experience and celebrate the 100th anniversary of a silent film masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen: on the big screen, with live music!
This program is a venue rental engagement. Member discounts and Frida Cinema comp passes not valid. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff.
Read More
The bold, genre-defying horror-Mermaid-musical mashup The Lure is August’s Frida Cinema Members Only screening!
In this playful and confident debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska — a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters are drawn ashore in an alternate ’80s Poland to explore the wonders and temptations of life on land. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly aura make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers in the half-glam, half-decrepit fantasy world of Smoczynska’s imagining. In a visceral twist on Hans Christian Andersen’s original Little Mermaid tale, one sister falls for a human, and as the bonds of sisterhood are tested, the lines between love and survival get blurred. A savage coming-of-age fairytale with a catchy new-wave soundtrack, lavishly grimy sets, and outrageous musical numbers, The Lure explores its themes of sexuality, exploitation, and the compromises of adulthood with energy and originality.
Not a member yet? Sign up here: https://thefridacinema.org/memberships/
Read More
