Trash Scab
From the Archives
•
Drama, Short Films, 27-Jan-2021
An entrepreneur pivots with the market. “Trash Scab,” directed by Philip Steiger, is a scarily plausible, bitingly funny vision of a dystopian nightmare. The circumstances have been exaggerated from our current reality but not by much: a pandemic rages on, a citywide curfew in place, police have been disbanded. When sanitation workers go on strike it adds to the chaos, and a young man desperate for cash begins a morally questionable scab service removing trash from the homes of those who can afford it, and disposing of it wherever he can find. It’s a highly energetic, viscerally shot and edited portrait of a broken society. The final scene profoundly portrays the harsh economic divide between rich and poor — as the trash collector takes a tour of a luxury high rise apartment, it’s not clear whether he’s made enough money to afford the spot, or if he’s just there to smoke a cigarette on the balcony 40 floors up and imagine himself removed from the destitution below. -KA. Director Philip Steiger. Starring Philip Steiger, Jacob Wysocki & Will Hines. Cinematographer: Ben Mullen. Art Director: Zachary Louis Miller. Colorist: Andrew Francis. Music: Deerhoof & Ana Roxanne.
Up Next in From the Archives
-
Muck
In her bombastic daydreams, Mel Vitale plays “the hardest-working cunt in show-business,” a scrappy broad stacked with brass balls and blue jokes. Back on our planet, Mel resembles less Joan Rivers and more the demon child of Wednesday Adams and Al Pacino. And her act, which often unravels into t...
-
how can i be present when photographs...
While pondering the need to endlessly capture her life in photos and videos, a filmmaker attempts to be present in the moment. Shereen Lani Younes directs “how can i be present when photographs exist,” a self-reflective video essay narrated with stream-of-consciousness musings over a smorgasborg ...
-
Darts
wormgirl plays darts.
wormgirl was inspired by the time-bending isolation that came out of lockdown. with nothing to do and no one to see, the scope of the day shrank from a full life of work commitments and relationships to a lonely, worm-like crawl. wormgirl shows the highs and lows of worming...