Exit Through the Garage Shop: Spy Glasses Experiment

Through the surreptitious lens of a spy camera hidden in her glasses, the filmmaker takes the audience on a meditative amble inside one of New York City's best kept secrets: the Antique Garage Flea Market, full of colorful New York characters and even more colorful collectibles from the past. The shoppers in the film do not display any self-consciousness in front of the concealed camera, which captures them at their most natural state of browsing, playing, bargaining etc. But an unexpected celebrity encounter breaks the dreamy rhythm. The filmmaker is caught staring at him. Can he tell that she is filming him?

This film tries to document and remember the garage market in its final days, before the garage is sold and leveled to make way for luxury condos. The antique market was my favorite memory of my Chelsea days, because the old things told me stories of New York from a bygone era. I once came across folders of slides from Woody Allen's unknown movie from the 70s. I bought $1 postcards of Manhattan landmarks from the 1900s, and picked random photographs from a box of old pictures like its the lottery. Those days of me getting lost in the market time-traveling were now also a fragment of a distant past, a fading memory. I have very little to show for it, but for this little video.

Music: Madlib