The Wild World of Lydia Lunch

Nick Zedd (born January 25, 1958 or May 8, 1959 in Takoma Park, Maryland) is an American filmmaker and author based in New York City. He coined the term Cinema of Transgression in 1985 to describe a loose-knit group of like-minded filmmakers and artists using shock value and black humor in their work. These filmmakers and artistic collaborators included Richard Kern, Tessa Hughes Freeland, Lung Leg, and Lydia Lunch. Under numerous pen names Zedd edited and wrote the Underground Film Bulletin (1984-90) which publicised the work of these filmmakers. The Cinema of Transgression is explored in Jack Sargeant’s book Deathtripping Creation Books.

Zedd has directed several super-low-budget movies, including the feature length They Eat Scum and Geek Maggot Bingo, as well as numerous short films. With Rev. Jen Miller he is the co-creator of the public access television series Electra Elf (2004-), featuring Miller, Faceboy, Andrew J. Lederer and a who’s who of New York downtown art and performance-types. He is the author of two books, Bleed (1992, Hanuman Books) and Totem of the Depraved, (1996, 2.13.61Publications) both of which are autobiographical.

He is the director of photography on another TV series called “Chop Chop” (2007) produced by Nate Hill. Additional writing by Zedd is featured in Up Is Up But So Is Down (NYU Press) as well as in Captured (7 Stories Press), Low Rent (Grove Press) and Bleed (Hanuman Books). Nick Zedd performed in a noise unit called Zyklon B, releasing a single called Consume and Die in 2000.

Zedd toured with Lisa Crystal Carver’s Suckdog Circus and exhibited his films in the early 1990s.

Important essays outlining Zedd’s philosophy are the Cinema of Transgression Manifesto, published pseudonymously in the Underground Film Bulletin and The Theory of Xenomorphosis (1998).

Additionally, Nick Zedd has acted in such super-low-budget films as the Super-8 film The Manhattan Love Suicides (1985), What About Me (1993), Bubblegum (1995), Jonas In The Desert (1997),Troma Films’ Terror Firmer (1999) and Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001). –wikipedia