“In New York in the 80s, we were our own audience” – Liberation

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–For the release of her film “Variety”, the filmmaker looks back on artistic life in Manhattan in the 80s, on the creative boiling caused by the mixing of genres and on the encounters that gave birth to her film.–

From New York, where she lives, the filmmaker remembers the artistic effervescence in Manhattan at the start of the 1980s to which her first feature film bears witness. Variety.

“When I moved to New York in 1980, I was caught up in the underside of the city, those shown in films like the port of drugs by Samuel Fuller or Naked City by Jules Dassin. Exploring the city, I came across the Variety Theater – its neon sign was like a glimpse into the past. I couldn’t stop looking at her! I really wanted to know more about this cinema. How this former stable of the wealthy Stuyvesant family had become a porn cinema. I had found my decor. The heroine of my film would be a teller and in her glass booth, she would observe as much as she would be seen. I wanted to reverse the stereotype: she was going to be the investigator, and the man would be the enigmatic and elusive object. In the end, my character rarely enters the cinema. But she hears the sound of movies. We experience how much what we hear involves us more than what we see because listening necessarily arouses our own images.

“In New York in the 80s, it was easy to slip between the worlds of art, music, film and performance. The films showed the neighborhoods where the directors lived – East Village, Soho, Tribeca – the real estate market was in bad shape and this collapse…

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