Film-maker Charles Ahearn and painter Jane Dickson are man and wife. Their views of ‘the neon theatre of life’ are compiled in this video. The two can see this theatre of life every day near their home on Times Square in New York City.Dickson’s paintings portray people forced ‘to live their private lives in public’. In Dickson’s paintings, street life is often seen from above and her dramatic use of perspective, light and darkness reveal the influence of film. Her paintings have been compared with film noir from the forties.In the video, the recordings of Ahearn and the artworks of Dickson are woven into a portrait of the artist as voyeur and inhabitant of an artificial world filled with desire and despair. Voyeurism also plays an important role in the world which is examined: on Times Square are many (porno) cinemas and peep-shows.Times Square and its colourful population are also the subject of Ahearn’s Doin’ Time in Times Square, which is also being screened at the festival.
