“If it’s not transgressive, it’s not underground. It has to be threatening the status quo by doing something surprising, not just imitating what’s been done before.” - Nick Zedd
New York City’s Lower East Side in the early Eighties saw an explosion of the downtown film scene, as a variety of film-makers, photographers, performers and artists, inspired by the post-punk No Wave music scene, began to explore new, direct, and confrontational cinematic forms.
In 1984 the manifesto for the Cinema of Transgression was announced, a movement looking to transform values by breaking all taboos of cinematic expression, conservative religion, politics and aesthetics.
Cinema of Transgression Manifesto
by Nick ZeddWe who have violated the laws, commands and duties of the avant-garde; i.e. to bore, tranquilize and obfuscate through a fluke process dictated by practical convenience stand guilty as charged. We openly renounce and reject the entrenched academic snobbery which erected a monument to laziness known as structuralism and proceeded to lock out those filmmakers who possesed the vision to see through this charade.
We refuse to take their easy approach to cinematic creativity; an approach which ruined the underground of the sixties when the scourge of the film school took over. Legitimising every mindless manifestation of sloppy movie making undertaken by a generation of misled film students, the dreary media arts centres and geriatic cinema critics have totally ignored the exhilarating accomplishments of those in our rank - such underground invisibles as Zedd, Kern, Turner, Klemann, DeLanda, Eros and Mare, and DirectArt Ltd, a new generation of filmmakers daring to rip out of the stifling straight jackets of film theory in a direct attack on every value system known to man.
We propose that all film schools be blown up and all boring films never be made again. We propose that a sense of humour is an essential element discarded by the doddering academics and further, that any film which doesn’t shock isn’t worth looking at. All values must be challenged. Nothing is sacred. Everything must be questioned and reassessed in order to free our minds from the faith of tradition.Intellectual growth demands that risks be taken and changes occur in political, sexual and aesthetic alignments no matter who disapproves. We propose to go beyond all limits set or prescribed by taste, morality or any other traditional value system shackling the minds of men. We pass beyond and go over boundaries of millimeters, screens and projectors to a state of expanded cinema.
We violate the command and law that we bore audiences to death in rituals of circumlocution and propose to break all the taboos of our age by sinning as much as possible. There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined. None shall emerge unscathed. Since there is no afterlife, the only hell is the hell of praying, obeying laws, and debasing yourself before authority figures, the only heaven is the heaven of sin, being rebellious, having fun, fucking, learning new things and breaking as many rules as you can. This act of courage is known as transgression. We propose transformation through transgression - to convert, transfigure and transmute into a higher plane of existence in order to approach freedom in a world full of unknowing slaves.
Featured films for Download from UbuWeb:
Tessa Hughes-Freeland
Nymphomania
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 61mb
Co. dir. by Holly Adams - 1993 - 08:53
Starring Holly Adams and Bob Mook
Baby Doll
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 22mb
1982 - 03:16 - Featuring Feme and Irene
M Henry Jones
Eyeglass Advert 1
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 2.7mb | 0:31
Eyeglass Advert 2
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 3mb | 0:31
Eyeglass Advert 3
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 3mb | 0:31
Unknown 1
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 5.2mb | 0:52
Unknown 2
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 6.3mb | 0:59
Soul City
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 15.3mb | 02:13 | 1979
Beth B
Stigmata
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 264mb
1991 - 38:13
Featuring Joseph Budenholzer, Kelly Considine, Johnny Lanz, Miriam McDonough, Brian Moran, Laura Miles Wright
Jeri Cain Rossi
Black Hearts Bleed Red
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 107mb
1992 - 15:36
-A stark adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Starring Joe Coleman, Zemlya Vaudaux, Miss Xanna Don’t, Tod Allen, Nathaniel Roman, Dana Hatch, Marya Zoya Greene, Tommy Turner.
Tommy Turner & David Wojnarowicz
Where Evil Dwells
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 197mb
1985 - 28:33
Loosely based on the story of the “Satan” teen killer Ricky Kasso. Starring Joe Coleman, Rockets Redglare, Natz, Nancy Coleman, Baby Gregor, Scott Werner and others.
Kembra Pfahler
Cornella; The Story of a Burning Bush
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 37.5mb
1985 - 05:29
Film-as-performance from actress, artist, filmmaker, and co-founder of rock band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (Spelling Bee by TVHOKB (MP3)).
Jon Moritsugu
Mommy, Mommy, Where’s My Brain?
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 64.2mb
1986 - 09:20
Richard Kern
My Nightmare
Format: avi | Size: 66.4mb
1993 - 05:00
Starring Richard Kern and Susan McNamara
Thrust in Me
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 67mb
Co. dir. By Nick Zedd - 1985 - 08:12
Starring Nick Zedd, Don Houston, Margo Day and Dee Finley
much praise has to be given to greylodge & ubuweb for making these films available,its been a long time since i have seen any of these films, there was a underground scene over here in england during the early 80’s, mainly centered on the NY bands like sonic youth,swans,suicide,dna,esg,liquid liquid and other no/wave luminaries - so when these bands name checked these films, they were sought out and arrived on these shores as not so great quality expensive vhs bootleg copies - anyway,thanks to ubuweb’s huge bandwidth the first are already to watch - i will be interested to see how they stand up to a gap of 20yrs since i last saw a lot of these.
ps> anyone got a copy of the smithreens with tom verlaine, came out about 1981 - an amazing snapshot of the NY no-wave/discopunk scene
Comment by jackamo — put June 16, 2006 @ 4:34 am