Artist Rose Salane has excavated New York City archives of all kinds, from the MTA’s repository of counterfeit subway tokens to a collection of photographs taken from the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. In her debut film, she assembles her own archive, celebrating “the many lives that the city hosts…[using] the art form of cinema to help hold their synchronicity and share the serendipity that is felt while moving across New York City.”
Mercurial New York unfolds as a series of conversations—staged but largely improvised, with everyday New Yorkers playing versions of themselves—taking place from day to night across the five boroughs. Exchanges between friends, family members, and lovers, recorded in 20 languages in a testament to the city’s rich cultural diversity, offer glimpses into the life experiences of city residents and the conditions that shape them. Through the use of telephoto lenses and plucky on-location shoots, the film’s beguiling camera perspectives travel, as New Yorkers do, between the heights of skyscraper towers and subterranean tunnels and everything in between. Finding great intimacy in shared spaces, Salane’s kinetic, tender portrait pulses with the geometries, sounds, and textures of contemporary city life.
The screening is presented in conjunction with Storefront for Art and Architecture and will be followed by a conversation with Salane moderated by Sophie Cavoulacos, Curator, Department of Film.
Mercurial New York. 2025–26. USA. Directed by Rose Salane. 67 min. New York premiere.