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Event
LLIK YOUR IDOLS - Chicago Underground Film Festival
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18
6:00 PM CHOPIN THEATRE
LIKK YOUR IDOLS
LIKK YOUR IDOLS
Angelique Bosio
Documentary Video 70 :00 2007 U.S. Premiere (France)
"We violate the command and law that we bore audiences to death in rituals of circumlocution and propose to break all the taboos of our age by sinning as much as possible. There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined. None shall emerge unscathed." - from the Cinema of Transgression Manifesto
"You didn't miss anything if you weren't in New York in the 80s. All you missed are the clubs and the drugs and some of the sex... and you missed meeting some of these people that would die in sort of accidental situations... " - David West
LLIK YOUR IDOLS gives an overview of the underground film movement known as "The Cinema of Transgression," a loose group of impoverished super-8 filmmakers working in the post-punk Lower East Side of New York. The film focuses on four of the main figures of this movement: Richard Kern (the first CUFF Guest of Honor), Lydia Lunch, Joe Coleman and the notorious Nick Zedd (a multiple CUFF alum) who served as chief propagandist, writing the group's manifesto and documenting it as it happened through his Xeroxed zine "The Underground Film Bulletin". These four individuals look back on their motivations for producing "transgressive" art as well as their different approaches to channeling their youthful anger and pain into attempts to become balanced adults (or not). Also interviewed are others affiliated with the group including Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Richard Hell, underground cultural expert Jack Sargeant and queer-punk filmmaker Bruce LaBruce.
The Cinema of Transgression filmmakers worked completely outside both the commercial considerations of Hollywood and the academic institutionalization that increasingly dominated the avant-garde throughout the seventies taking inspiration equally from the counter-cultural underground films of Warhol, Smith and the Kuchar brothers as well as the sleaziest of 42nd street grindhouses. With soundtracks provided by local bands including Sonic Youth, Swans, Foetus and others they were more likely to be screened to rowdy crowds at downtown nightclubs than the cultural centers that were promoting structuralism and identity politics.
The films were short, shot in Super 8 and full of violence, drugs, perversions, and dark humor. A crude, angry and humorous cinematic raised middle finger directed at both Reagan era conservatives and the failed idealism of the 60s. LIKK YOUR IDOLS provides the first documentary look at this truly underground film movement
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LocationChopin Theater
1543 W. Division
Chicago, IL 60622
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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