LlIK Your Idols

LlIK Your Idols(2007)
Directed By: Angelique Bosio

Written By: Justin Bozung
Mondo Film & Video Guide Co-Founder
IMDb.com

Llik your Idols is documentary film directed by Angelique Bosio about the superbly beautiful underground experimental film movement of the 1980′s New York City underground, called The Cinema Of Transgression.  The movement, and phrase coined via manifesto by scum fuck auteur, Nick Zedd, came about in the mid 80′s as a collective of lower east side / east village / bowery up and comers (musicians, performance artists, filmmakers, and general scumbags) that started making “art” with an urban voice. They created visions and sounds about their life experiences and surrounding environment of New York City.

The collective includes the likes of Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch, Sonic Youth, Jon Spencer, Tommy Turner, painter Joe Coleman, and of course, Nick Zedd.  They created stark images and sounds that’s produced shock waves that are felt today in popular culture on television, film and music.

The documentary runs weak and narrow at around seventy minutes, and is more or less a love letter to the more enduring characters from the movement, such as Nick Zedd, Joe Coleman, Richard Kern, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth fame.. While the clear standout’s film wise of the movement here are Zedd and Kern, Zedd’s films are much more artistic and significant, than those of Kern, who’s work is a brash look into perverted voyeurism. The lo-fi films will shock and destroy you on all levels. You’ve never seen anything like these at any shitty college film fest. While the documentary is a wonderful starting point for a newbie, interested in learning about this BIG FOOT NOTE in experimental film history. I felt that the film, did a piss poor job, of converting into the myth such film and video artists of the movement  as Tommy Turner, Tessa Hughes Freeland, and Jon Mortigsugu.

If one is to take a deep interest into the Cinema of Transgression as I have, strongly direct yourself into intense research and pass this documentary up, for a more detailed and respectful account in a book written by Jack Sargent called, Death Tripping: The Cinema Of Transgression.   The book is the end all guide to the movement.  A large share of the films are available commercially through MVD Distributors on the east coast in director specific collections, and also, the more hard to find films are available directly in a compilation available from Nick Zedd himself, at www.nickzedd.com

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