Disposal
Paul Hanna and Maya Castronovo
2024
Disposal was filmed at Shirley Chisholm State Park, site of the defunct Fountain Avenue Landfill in Brooklyn, New York. From 1961 to 1985, the landfill received hundreds of thousands of tons of trash and illegal hazardous waste. Castronovo and Hanna’s staging references these waste practices, as well as the site’s history as an illicit dumping ground for the bodies of murder victims. The film’s cyclical, embodied camera encourages us to consider how violence is encoded within the landscape itself. By refusing conventional cinematic closure, Disposal situates these traces of violence within frameworks of ecological restoration and renewal.