Llik Your Idols

MVD Entertainment Group

R1 DVD

While most of the more creative artists and musicians are anti-censorship and have nothing but contempt for conservative regimes, it is ironic that under such regimes they sometimes produce their best work. The pressure to conform, to fulfil a given social role produces such a reaction in many artists that a truly explosive artistic expression results. It is, accordingly, no wonder that under Reagan and Bush Senior a truly radical New York scene developed in the eighties that has not been repeated since.

Under the banner of the Cinema of Transgression a bunch of “insolent kids”,including Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch, Joe Coleman and Nick Zedd, briefly become the anti-heroes of a generation. Scornful, cynical, arrogant and flippant, their films and music violently attacked the bland conformity they experienced all around them. Their work ranged from the highly erotic (Richard Kern & Nick Zedd) to the furious and feminist (Lydia Lunch) and truly iconoclastic and artistic (Joe Coleman).

The music produced also had an edge like no other and was made as though as there was no tomorrow, and for many this was close to literally true. It become known as No Wave and featured such bands as Sonic Youth, The Swans, Lydia Lunch, The Butthole Surfers and Foetus.

Directed and produced by Angelique Bosio this is a low budget documentary produced from obsession and true devotion. With little to no funding Bosio collected interviews with such significant figures as Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch, Joe Coleman, Jack Sargeant, Thurston Moore, Richard Hell, Bruce Labruce, Jarboe and others and has created a brutally honest, warts and all journey into the creative underground.

Bosio offers an excellent background to the Cinema of Transgression with is nihilistic and cynical view of life, its obsessions with blood, murder, violence and sex and above all, it incredible honesty about the human condition.

This movie has be shown at festivals and theaters across the globe, including: Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Mu-Meson Archives (Sydney), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Seoul Film Festival, Erotica Film Fest (Los Angeles), Emmetrop Festival (Bourges), Oslo International Film Festival, Coney Island Film Festival, Melbourne Underground Film Festival, The Other Cinema (San Francisco), Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, AS 220 (Providence), Seattle Grand Illusion Cinema, and many others...

Reviews appear on the Synergy website with a single cover image. In the digital and print edition, reviews appear with multiple images. We recommend you download the free digital edition (or buy the print edition) to get the most from Synergy Magazine.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.4 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

If you came to this page directly (and missed our menu), click here to go to the front page of Synergy Magazine Website or click the following link http://www.synergy-magazine.com