USA,
1994, 80 min
Shown in 1994
CREDITS
- dir
-
Shu Lea Cheang
- prod
-
Shu Lea Cheang, Jennifer Fong
- scr
-
Jessica Hagedorn
- cam
-
Jane Castle
- editor
-
Lauren Zuckerman
- cast
-
Sarita Choudhury, Erin McMutry, Laurie Carlos, Jose Zuniga
- source
-
The Airwaves Project
-
COMMENTS
Shu Lea Cheang in person.
OTHER
Kill is Dutch for “stream,” and Shu Lea Cheang’s audacious directorial debut is a lethal comedy swimming through a torrent of toxic multinational treachery. Fresh Kill tells the story of two young lesbian parents (Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry) caught up in a global exchange of industrial waste via contaminated sushi. The place is New York and the time is now. Raw fish lips are the rage on trendy menus across Manhattan. A ghost barge, bearing nuclear refuse, circles the planet in search of a willing port. Household pets start to glow ominously and then disappear altogether. The sky opens up and snows soap flakes. People start speaking in tongues. The crisis escalates when a multinational corporation is implicated and the couple’s infant daughter mysteriously vanishes. After uncovering censored information, a group of young New Yorkers makes an unlikely alliance with activists in the developing world and strikes back. A riveting and densely packed film, Fresh Kill evokes the furious rhythms of channel surfing with its rapid-fire editing style. Cheang and screenwriter Jessica Hagedorn have conjured a trippy, extraliterary dimension, one where Jorge Luis Borges’s search for his “Dreamtiger” intersects with lesbian-erotic flights into cyberspace. A striking score by Vernon Reid and wicked cameos by performance art stalwarts Ron Vawter, Karen Finley, Laurie Carlos and Robbie McCauley feed the frenzy.
—Lawrence Chua
FACTOID #111
Both parents of TV star Mariska Hargitay attended the Festival, but not at the same time. Actress Jayne Mansfield attended in 1966 on a lark, and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay attended in 1989, having appeared as himself in György Szomjas’s film Mr. Universe.
