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Screening on VHS. Emerging from the restless energy of New York’s underground arts scene, Variety stands as one of the defining independent works of the 1980s. Written by the iconoclastic Kathy Acker and directed with remarkable precision by Bette Gordon, the film follows Christine (Sandy McLeod), who takes a job at a pornographic cinema in Times Square. What begins as an ordinary act of employment evolves into a provocative journey through desire, fantasy and self-discovery. Refusing easy categorisation, Variety turns the gaze back on itself, offering a radical exploration of female voyeurism rarely seen on screen. Sensual, unsettling and hypnotic, it lingers like a half-remembered dream of a vanished New York—a film in which looking becomes longing, and the city itself seems to stare back.