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Variety (18) 2K Restoration

— ,Cinemas 2 & 3
A woman looks longingly out of a cinema booth at the neon lights of the surrounding street

Bette Gordon's 1983 alluring feminist drama about a young woman's sexual awakening in an underground New York pornographic cinema. 

Variety follows a young aspiring author, Christine, who is in much need of a job. When she starts working at a Times Square pornographic cinema, she becomes obsessed with an older patron, and experiences a sexual awakening of her own. 

Coming out three years before David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Variety plays into the American 1980s canon that was obsessed with sexuality (following the AIDS crisis) and observation (in light of the exponential development of technology, and rising crime and income inequality in the States.

Written by novelist and former sex worker Kathy Acker, and featuring a performance by Nan Goldin, Bette Gordon's female gaze has been called a 'feminist Vertigo'.

Shocking audiences at Cannes and Toronto in 1983, Bette Gordon's Variety has been newly restored for contemporary audiences.

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USA 1983 dir Bette Gordon 101 min

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Cinemas 2 & 3