Our Valentine’s eve special feature brought in a good audience tonight. Eighteenth century lesbian love in Brittany… pretty racy. Apparently, the portrait-painting technique was ill-researched and not realistic. Not being a painter, I was unaware of this, so for me – not a deal-breaker. I thought Portrait of a Lady on Fire was richly beautiful, and deeply touching. Hard not to shed a few tears. Céline Sciamma is on fire herself.

Our hysterical animated short was Bad History – Putin by FrameBreed.

“My heart is cold. My moves are bold. Never get old. I save the world.”

It’s been a minute since we had to hold over a beautiful film for an encore screening, but this one deserved as second look (albeit a first listen, for those of you in the know, lol). Not at all an uncut gem, Mati Diop’s Atlantique, surpassed expectations, and even administered another dose of sexy un-deadness. (Where was this shot again? Zombia? Sorry… can’t resist a good pun, or even a terrible one, for that matter.)

Each week started with a gorgeous short. The first was Shot by Sasha by some entity that chooses to call themselves Realbakirov, and the second was Le Silence de la rue by Marie Opron. I must admit that I sometimes feel bad about not including the title sequences and credits in the shorts shown at NewScreen, but ultimately I think it’s better to let the short speak for itself, and not let the credits distract from moving the program forward. You can always find the info here.

Having seen Shin’ichirô Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead just a few days earlier, It was difficult for me to not laugh at events that looked like one thing, but which would turn out to be altogether different when revealed later. Our audience thought I was over-reacting, and being something of a cheerleader. I had to apologize, but they figured it out later.

This hysterical film within a film (within a film?) joyride was made for an astoundingly low $25,000, and has gone on to gross $30.5 million worldwide!

Due to a technical glitch, I found myself scrambling to find an opener last minute, so I hit the replay button and showed Anna Mantzara’s Enough – her first year film from London’s Royal College of Art. It was great to see again.

Tonight, just two days before the winter solstace, we enjoyed what has been noted for being a horror movie that takes place fully in daylight. Midsommar, Ari Aster’s follow up to the deeply disturbing Hereditary is a creepy (seems to be an oft-recurring theme around here this season), and gruesomely captivating story of pagan ritual. Aster was inspired by Robin Hardy’s 1973 The Wicker Man – this year’s NewScreen season opener.

The world wide internet for computers, as my fiend Michael likes to call it, is jam-packed with “explanations” of the ending, and theories about the deeper meaning of Midsommar, but c’mon! It’s just a break-up movie with some twitchy, witchy action. OK, joking.

How can the seemingly hapless, and long-suffering Dani (played perfectly by English actor, Florence Pugh) endure the mediocrity of her selfish boyfriend and his idiot friends. Not giving anything away here, but it’s kind of a happy ending…

Our into short tonight was Dimitri Basil’s Obsession – Joywave a fun mash-up of fictional movie title screens.

Noah Baumbach’s 2005 film, The Squid and the Whale played tonight for a small group – it’s a tough time of year to get many of your bums on our seats, apparently. I had wanted to show this one for many years, but when I first had the notion, it seemed a little, well, mainstream! I saw it projected at the Metrograph a few weeks ago, and I realized it would be perfect for NewScreen. Although it’s ostensibly a sad story about an eighties Park Slope family living through a bitter marital break-up, it is also really really funny. My audience applauded. ))

Our opening short this evening was a The Bully, by Sody.

In my experience, Korean films can be (and love to be) a bit over-the-top (as can films from any country, to be fair, still… Korea seems to have a special advantage in this respect), but Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite strikes a magical balance of over-the-top-ness and gripping story-telling that left me and our lovely audience screaming with delight tonight. I hope the neighbors didn’t mind!

As perfect as it gets, Parasite invites you to be an insider to begin with… you just know how this con is going to play out, and you cheer as it does, until… well… until… This is film-making at its very best. Somewhat reminiscent of last year’s Palme d’or winner, Shoplifters, come to think of it.

Since Parasite is a tiny bit on the long side (not that you’d notice), we selected a brief short this evening… our go-to brief short, in fact. Evil Beaver a Miller Lite commercial, believe it or not. Funny.