Shu Lea Cheang in BOMB Magazine

Fresh Kill is the 1994 feature debut of queer filmmaking pioneer Shu Lea Cheang. Funny, experimental, and unapologetically feminist, this sci-fi comedy is now considered an underground classic.

We would like to take you back to 1996, when Shu Lea Cheang and screenwriter Jessica Hagedorn spoke with BOMB Magazine about Fresh Kill. We were struck by Cheang’s view that her highly idiosyncratic, genre-hopping work would perhaps best find its audience on the then nascent internet. None of us could have known in 1996 that OVID would help films like Fresh Kill reach a wider audience.

A lot of times people want to put Fresh Kill in a certain context, so they put it in a gay and lesbian festival and only lesbians come to see it. I’ve refused to be framed that way. I love the idea of showing to an audience where there’s crossover. They can get it. It’s not like they get there and they’re confused. We also have a whole sphere that we haven’t tapped, the cyber audience. For me, the biggest ad campaign should be in cyberspace, to that whole hack generation. 

Fresh Kill premieres on OVID today!