Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction this Thursday, May 19: FLORENT: QUEEN OF THE MEAT MARKET
David Sigal’s look at the end of a NYC institution debuted at NewFest in 2009, where it won an audience award. Other screenings included Outfest, Seattle LGBT, and the NYC Food Film Festival.
For nearly a quarter of a century, the legendary Florent diner served the colorful denizens of New York City – from drag queens to blue-haired doyens, A-list celebrities to club kids, tourists to late-night partiers. The all-night eatery, based in the heart of the once-feared and now-chic Meatpacking District, was the brainchild of beloved French transplant, Florent Morellet, an HIV-positive gay activist who early on saw how his establishment could thrive not by cultivating exclusivity, but by embracing diversity. The restaurant could survive seemingly anything – except for a radical increase in rent, forcing Morellet to close on Gay Pride Day in June, 2008. Sigal’s entertaining film chronicles not only the story of the man and his restaurant, but of the radical changes that have impacted the culture and society of New York City since the diner’s opening in the mid-1980s – from the LGBT community’s struggle with the AIDS epidemic and homophobia, to the economic development of formerly seedy neighborhoods often at the expense of long-standing institutions like Florent itself.
what (not) to doc 