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Half Life
2020
00:12:23
'Half Life' is a cinematic meditation on the intersection of carceral practice, nuclear waste disposal and Japanese Internment. Drawn from Ito's family's incarceration during World War II and research surrounding radioactive waste in the American Southwest, 'Half Life' interrogates the politics of disposal, both social and environmental, and the cultural mutations that bloom from ecologies of forgotten life. The film takes shape through the frames of documentary, science-fiction and dreams as the audience is transported between the internment camp site where Ito's family was held, the Trinity Site at White Plains Missile Range, a family home in Pacoima, CA and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. An anonymous narrator guides the viewer through the violence of waste- from body to registration or earth into industrial doom- and the potential futures that can blossom from the ruins