Fresh Kill (Critical Condition)
Key Cast: Abraham Lim, Erin McMurtry, Jose Zuniga, Laurie Carlos, Nelini Stamp, Rino Thunder, Sarita Choudhury, Will Kemp
Director: Shu Lea Cheang
Producer: Jennifer Fong, Shu Lea Cheang
Screenwriter: Jessica Hagedorn
Cinematographer: Jane Castle
Composer: Vernon Reid
Radical lesbians, radioactive fish lips and toxic cat food collide in this avant-garde sci-fi – a transgressive landmark of anarcho-satire and queer hacktivism.
In a post-apocalyptic New York City that has become a toxic waste dump, Claire and Shareen (Mississippi Masala’s Sarita Choudhury) find themselves caught in a sinister conspiracy when their young daughter eats some contaminated fish, begins to glow with a radioactive sheen and suddenly vanishes. Could it be the doing of an ominous multinational corporation waging war on the working class? Who are the chaotic cable-TV hosts hawking sex toys with baby heads? And can a sushi chef turned hacker disrupt the system and help the marginalised fight back?
Taiwanese-born multimedia artist Shu Lea Cheang’s wickedly funny, fiercely political debut helped to popularise the then-novel term ‘hacktivism’ upon its release in 1994 yet remains an underseen work of queer feminism – one whose whiplash rhythms and channel-surfing collage anticipate the splintered media landscape of our present. A tale of ghost ships, green cats and dreamlike erotica, Fresh Kill is a visionary work that mixes camp humour with radical dissertations on gender, climate, class and race.
“A lethal comedy swimming through a torrent of toxic multinational treachery … [in] a trippy, extra-literary dimension, where Jorge Luis Borges’ search for his ‘Dreamtiger’ intersects with lesbian-erotic flights into cyberspace.” – BOMB Magazine
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This screening will be introduced by film critic Phoebe Chen (Artforum, Film Comment), and a panel discussion will follow the film.
Phoebe Chen is a writer and PhD candidate from China and Australia now living in New York. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Artforum, The Nation, the New York Times Magazine and elsewhere.
Michael Sun is a critic and essayist who currently works in culture and lifestyle at The Guardian, where he recently hosted the internet culture podcast Saved for Later. His writing on film and music has also been published in The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, ABC Arts, Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review and many more. He hosts a weekly show on FBi Radio in Sydney, where he lives.
Dr Kelli Weston is a film critic and programmer based in Brooklyn. She earned her doctorate at Birkbeck College, University of London, and specialises in nonfiction and horror cinema, with a particular emphasis on the visual narratives of Black women filmmakers. Her writing has been published in Sight and Sound, Film Comment, The Current (Criterion) and The Guardian, among other publications.