Underground Film Journal

Nick Zedd

Nick Zedd is an American underground filmmaker based in New York City. He is also the founder of the Cinema of Transgression film movement.

Zedd began making films with 1979's They Eat Scum and later formed a cohesive film movement out of NYC's Lower East Side low-budget, shock-based filmmaking community. His efforts included publishing the zine The Underground Film Bulletin, holding screening events in alternative venues, writing the Cinema of Transgression's manifesto and producing a VHS compilation of Transgression filmmakers' films.

Even though the official Transgression movement burned out by the early '90s, it helped influence a whole new generation of extreme filmmakers.

Zedd has continued to make films since then and directed the public access superhero parody TV show The Adventures of Electra Elf starring Rev. Jen.

Learn more about this filmmaker at his official website.

Watch Streaming Films By Nick Zedd:

Filmography

I Was a Quality of Life Violation (2002)
Lord of the Cockrings (2002)
Elf Panties: The Movie (2001)
I of K9 (2001)
Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001)
Imitation of Kiss (2001)
Tom Thumb in the Land of the Giants (1999)
Ecstasy in Entropy (1999)
Screen Test 98 (1998)
Why Do You Exist? (1998)
Smiling Faces Tell Lies (1995)
War Is Menstrual Envy (1992)
Whoregasm (1988)
Police State (1987)
Kiss Me Goodbye (1986)
Go to Hell (1986)
Thrust in Me (1985) (with Richard Kern)
School of Shame (1984)
Geek Maggot Bingo (1983)
The Wild World of Lydia Lunch (1983)
The Bogus Man (1980)
They Eat Scum (1979)

Articles:

Flashback: 3rd Annual New York Film Festival Downtown

The third annual New York Film Festival Downtown was once again organized and presented by filmmakers Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Ela Troyano in 1986. In the festival’s program notes, the pair continued to bemoan the lack of attention given to Lower East Side filmmakers in their own city: Three years later the situation remains virtually unchanged […]

Flashback: 2nd Annual New York Film Festival Downtown

Filmmakers Tessa-Hughes Freeland and Ela Troyano founded the New York Film Festival Downtown in 1984. In the program for the second annual edition in 1985, they laid out the need for such an event: “Most films made in this society fall into two categories: those financed and marketed commercially, and their counterparts in the arts […]

1985: The Cinema Of Transgression Manifesto Is Published

In September 1985, Nick Zedd published the fourth issue of his zine The Underground Film Bulletin, in which the most important article was Zedd’s “The Cinema of Transgression Manifesto,” which reads like a proclamation of war against avant-garde filmmaking and “academic snobbery.

Taylor Mead, R.I.P.

Underground film actor and poet Taylor Mead has passed away at the age of 88 after suffering a debilitating stroke. He starred in The Flower Thief and Tarzan and Jane Regained.. Sort of.

2011 B-movie, Underground and Trash Film Festival: Teaser Trailer

Europe’s B-Movie, Underground and Trash Film Festival will be held this year in the city center of Breda in the Netherlands on Sept. 7-11. In addition to film, the fest also celebrates several other arts, including music, poetry and comic books. But, on the film front, this year’s special film guest of honor will be […]