A Potter’s Field

Documenting the suppressed and repressed death network of New York City's COVID-19 emergency, "A Potter's Field" uses natural and technological imagery and sound to map a taboo: pandemic corpses stored in refrigerated trailers are transported by truck and ferry to Hart Island, a beautiful natural landscape and mass grave run by Department of Correction (employees and) inmates. Since 1869, the unclaimed bodies of more than 1 million New York City residents have been buried there. Shot amidst a city lockdown, the film immanently creates a Late Capitalist memento mori by avoiding the live human form. Instead it seizes the thousands of unseen corpses destined for Hart Island -- New York City's potter's field. Between aerial representations of Hart Island, Super 8mm film flows relentlessly, punctuated by a drone shot of the high security corpse storage site in the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. Public archival material and historical news reports situate Hart Island. A 17th century New Testament suggests the titular origin of this film.

Zev Aaron | Director, Producer, Camera, Sound

7. Oktober 2022 | 17:00

Spatial Data Management (US 2021) by Greyory Blake
The Library (IL 2021) by Renana Aldor
A Potter's Field (US 2022) by Zev Aaron
Exposed to Each Other (AT 2022) by Mersolis Schöne

Program