"transgression [trænzˈgrɛʃən]:
[n]  the action of going beyond or overstepping some boundary or limit
[n]  the act of transgressing; the violation of a law or a duty or moral principle "

Early eighties' New York saw the emergence of so-called "Cinema of Transgression", a term coined by underground filmmaker Nick Zedd, as a sort of cinematic outgrowth of the No Wave music movement (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, etc.) which made its rounds in the Lower East Side from 1976 to 1982. Besides Nick Zedd, other people like Richard Kern, David Wojnarowicz and Tessa Hughes-Freeland can be seen as part of this loose group of radical filmmakers.

American Puritanism with its sterile forms of cultural expression was the breeding ground for this extreme underground cinema – particularly classical Hollywood cinema. Since the sixties, the mainstream was increasingly under attack from within and had to deal with atypical forms of expression as these slowly settled into the folds of the American social fabric. After the counterculture movement of 1968 and its rehabilitation by the "official" culture, a new outbreak of widespread anti-establishment culture followed in the late seventies: punk.

Cinema of Transgression is a fundamental and radical result of the punk philosophy as it parodies the moral values and democratic institutions in an anarcho-nihilist discourse, but without offering any semblance of a political solution (and in this they differ radically from the underground filmmakers of the previous generation). The movies are brutal, grubby and unfinished. They wallow in the ethics of amateurism: the filmmakers don’t make their work for profit and therefore do not have to take note of what is or isn’t "acceptable". This "trash" aesthetic stems from the need to make do with whatever is available as well as from punk’s D.I.Y. ethics.

Cinema of Transgression, by definition, crosses borders - also international ones. The same themes are addressed in Europe where filmmakers like Birgit and Wilhelm Hein are closely and actively linked to the trans-Atlantic scene. And vice versa, since the pioneering work of the Vienna Actionists set the stage for Cinema of Transgression and thus forms an obligatory rite of passage for devotees of the extreme underground film.

In collaboration with BUTFF, Worm & Vzw Marcel.