Fresh Kill

Fresh Kill is a 1994 experimental film directed by Shu Lea Cheang and written by Jessica Hagedorn. It stars Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry as Shareen Lightfoot and Claire Mayakovsky, two lesbian parents who are drawn into a corporate conspiracy involving the Fresh Kills Landfill. Fresh Kill was an official selection at the 1994 Berlin International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival and is noted for its influence on hacker subculture, with an article about the film for the now-defunct hacker publication InfoNation containing one of the first uses of the term "hacktivism".

For the estuary in Staten Island, see Fresh Kills.
Fresh Kill
Directed byShu Lea Cheang
Produced byJennifer Fong
Shari Frilot
Written byJessica Hagedorn
Starring
Music byVernon Reid
CinematographyJane Castle
Edited byLauren Zuckerman
Production
companies
Airwaves Project
ITVS
Channel 4
Distributed byStrand Releasing
Release date
  • April 23, 1994 (1994-04-23) (USA Film Festival)
  • January 12, 1996 (1996-01-12) (United States)
Running time
80 minutes
CountryUnited States[1]
LanguageEnglish

Synopsis

Shareen Lightfoot and Claire Mayakovsky raise their daughter Honey near the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island in New York City. Shareen works as a salvager recovering refuse from the landfill, while Claire works as a waitress at a sushi restaurant. The city is heavily contaminated with pollution that adversely affects local animals and food; Claire brings home contaminated fish from the restaurant that is eaten by Honey, who begins glowing green and then vanishes. Shareen and Claire discover that the multinational GX Corporation is responsible for the pollution and Honey's disappearance, and become involved in an effort to hack and expose the company with sushi chef and hacker Jiannbin Lui, and poet and dishwasher Miguel Flores.

Cast

Production

Fresh Kill was directed by Shu Lea Cheang and written by Jessica Hagedorn.[2] The film bills itself as "eco cyber noia", the term "cyber noia" (or "cybernoia") having been coined by Cheang to describe "massive intrusions of networking technology into people's lives," and what she foresaw as "a future where multinational media empires clash with hackers."[4] Cheang has stated that the film was motivated by a desire to depict the relationship between the media and environmental racism, drawing parallels between the dumping of industrial toxic waste in the Third World with "the dumping of garbage TV programs" into Third World countries.[5] Hagedorn has stated that she wished to invert typical expectations and cliché stock characters, though sought not to "reverse things for their own sake," noting that Honey's parentage and the differing races of characters with direct biological relations are specifically never explained.[5]

Release

The film premiered on April 23, 1994 at the USA Film Festival, and was an official selection at the 1994 Berlin International Film Festival[1] and at the Toronto International Film Festival.[6] It was released theatrically in the United States on January 12, 1996.[7] Fresh Kill also screened at the Whitney Biennial in 1995,[8] and at the Asian American International Film Festival in 2019.[9]

Critical response and legacy

Fresh Kill is described by Cheang herself as a work of eco-cybernoia. An environment in which the inability to access the media of change causes the uprising of low-fi activism and hacker mentality, or “hacktivism” if you will.

— Jason Logan in InfoNation, November 1995[10]

In a review for The Los Angeles Times, critic Kevin Thomas offered praise for Cheang's direction and Hagedorn's writing, noting that the film's "interaction of a deteriorating environment, burgeoning cyberspace and mounting urban paranoia [...] create a vividly contemporary background" for a "gentle lesbian love story."[2] The Quad Cinema, where the film had its U.S. premiere,[7] called Fresh Kill "an underseen radical feminist gem" and favorably compared it to Brazil and Born in Flames.[6] Conversely, Janet Maslin of The New York Times offered praise for the film's soundtrack but described Fresh Kill as "aimless, arty self-indulgence carried to a remarkable extreme,"[7] while Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club surmised that the film was "too confused and disjointed to be anything but a well-intentioned, intermittently interesting failure."[11]

The film is noted for its themes of solidarity by marginalized groups against racism and sexism; its condemnation of transnational capitalism; and its depiction of how "resistance circulates through networks originally designed to facilitate the exchange of labor, commodities, and capital."[12] In her analysis of Fresh Kill, Gina Marchetti notes how the film depicts "the emancipatory potential of the digital," offering "hope for seizing the means of communication by reflecting on its own production and providing an image of radical media empowerment to inspire others."[8] The film is noted for its influence on hacker subculture, with a 1995 article about the film for the now-defunct hacker publication InfoNation containing one of the first uses of the term "hacktivism".[10][13][14][15]

References
  1. "Fresh Kill". Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin. 1994.
  2. Thomas, Kevin (19 April 1996). "Vital 'Fresh Kill' Dissects Life's Absurdities". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  3. "Fresh Kill (1994)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  4. "Taiwanese net pioneer Shu Lea Cheang to greet NYC cinephiles". Taiwan Ministry of Culture. 25 July 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  5. Chua, Lawrence (1 January 1996). "Shu Lea Cheang". BOMB. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  6. "Fresh Kill". Quad Cinema. 4 November 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  7. Maslin, Janet (12 January 1996). "Film Review; Radioactive Fish Lips In a Junk-Filled World". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 May 2015. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  8. "Fresh Kill". Carroll / Fletcher Onscreen. Carroll / Fletcher Gallery. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  9. "Asian American International Film Festival: Fresh Kill". Asian American International Film Festival. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  10. Logan, Jason. "Take the Skinheads Bowling". InfoNation. Archived from the original on 7 February 1997. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  11. Rabin, Nathan (29 March 2002). "Fresh Kill". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  12. "Fresh Kill". Video Data Bank. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  13. Pandey, Sheo Nandan (2010). "Hacktivism of Chinese Characteristics and the Google Inc. Cyber Attack Episode" (PDF). Institute for Strategic, Political, Security and Economic Consultancy: 1. Retrieved 13 July 2020.
  14. Webber, Craig; Yip, Michael (June 2018). "The Rise of Chinese Cyber Warriors: Towards a Theoretical Model of Online Hacktivism" (PDF). International Journal of Cyber Criminology. 12 (1): 230.
  15. Pinard, Maxime (March 2012). "L'hacktivisme dans le cyberespace: quelles réalité?". Revue internationale et stratégique (in French) (87). Retrieved 13 July 2020.
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