Metro

SI Beep’s flick is ‘garbage’: foes

A taxpayer-funded film about a city dump? It had better win an Oscar.

Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro has made a full-length documentary on the closing of the Fresh Kills landfill, directed by his own, $55,000-per-year, staff filmmaker.

Three years in the making, “The Fresh Kills Story” includes 46 interviews and footage shot from helicopters, kayaks and boats.

“I can’t even begin to estimate the thousands of hours it took to put it all together,” said the director, Andy Levison, Molinaro’s communications and media coordinator.

Levison edited the movie on Borough Hall’s $4,500 MacPro computer system. Cameras and other equipment came from Staten Island Community Television, a Borough Hall-controlled nonprofit funded by surcharges on Islanders’ cable bills. Aerial sequences are courtesy of a $14,000 helicopter shoot, originally done for a tourism video and funded by a local nonprofit.

“It’s a poor use of taxpayer dollars,” said Dick Dadey, of Citizens Union. “Often, in promoting their boroughs’ interests, borough presidents come across as promoting their own.”

Molinaro and his top advisers literally called the shots on the hourlong film, which critics say gives Molinaro a platform to settle some political scores and influence the Parks Department’s plans for the site.

The result is a version of history that praises Molinaro’s political allies, particularly his former boss and predecessor, Guy Molinari, and leaves out officials who have drawn the beep’s ire.

“This is to set the story straight,” Molinaro said.