Still from Whoregasm
Underground Film Series curator Pragya Ghosh contextualizes the controversial and provocative work of filmmakers Nick Zedd and Charles Henri Ford.
In the dark days of fall, when the veil between the real and the magical seems to be the perfect time to go back to the land of mythologies, I would like to imagine a dark dreary fall evening in New York, when Nick Zedd stumbles into Charles Henri Ford in the smoky underground bars that dot the Lower East Side — Ford, back in New York after his long sojourn in Nepal, and Zedd, a part of underground cinema after releasing films like They Eat Scum (1979), Thrust in Me (1984), and Whoregasm (1988). Having coined the term “Cinema of Transgression” and releasing a manifesto about it, Zedd and others of his ilk used shock value and black humor in their works, and who better to understand transgression than Charles Henri Ford? I would love to imagine what that meeting might have been like: the conversation about surrealism, myths, Paris, New York, the government, police, taboos, consumerism, and the transgressive nature of their work. Filmmaker, author, and artist — the three words that could be used to describe them both — it would have been a heady meeting. In lieu of a real-life meeting (which may or may not have happened, New York is a big city and I would like to imagine it happened), two of their films, Johnny Minotaur and Whoregasm, will be screened together at IU Cinema; think of it as the conversation that (never) happened.
In Greek mythologies, the minotaur is a mythical creature with the head and tail of a bull and the body of man — part man, part bull. The mythology claimed that he was the offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, and a snow-white bull that had been sent to Minos by Poseidon for sacrifice. Minos, in refusing to sacrifice the bull, infuriated Poseidon, and he made Pasiphae fall in love with it. Or maybe it was Zeus, the king of Gods who ruled on Mount Olympus, who cursed Minos by making Pasiphae fall in love with a white bull. Whatever the dark origins were which led to the creation of the minotaur, it became a symbol of duality: the strength as well as the loneliness of man.
In the 1960s, when Charles Henri Ford spent his summers in Crete, he began to make a fiction film posed as a production diary, Johnny Minotaur. Inspired by the place that was supposedly the birthplace of the myth itself, Ford’s retelling of the old tale brought in other supernatural creatures like Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster to mash the various myths in his surrealist revision of the old tale. It has been called a “lyrical explosion of taboos: incest, intergenerational desire, pansexuality, and autoeroticism are a few of the issues he grapples with through mythopoeic, sensual imagery, recitations of his diaries and a philosophical debate featuring impressive narration by such artists as Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert, Dan Basen, and Lynne Tillman.” Ford — a poet, novelist, diarist, experimental filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist — was a part of Gertrude Stein’s salons in Paris (meeting Peggy Guggenheim, Janet Flanner, and Man Ray) and was an openly queer man whose work reflected the sexual politics of the 20th century as an outsider to the mainstream.
His second film, Johnny Minotaur, is cinéma vérité of sorts — a film within a film, a palimpsest, impossible to understand whether the layers being peeled off are of the film or of the film being made. Its original screening became a celebrity event, with everyone from Andy Warhol to Taylor Meade present. Barney Rosset wrote about it in the Evergreen Review. It was shown in the Anthology Film Archives and was written about in the Village Voice in the ’80s, after which the film was damaged. It has since then been restored by The Film-makers’ Cooperative and MOMA and has been screened in some festivals, though many have also refused to screen it due to its many controversies, ironic as Ford intended the film to be a critique of classical allegory which had been central in the works of gay filmmakers in the 20th century.
Nick Zedd, known for his low-budget productions that inspired the themes of erotica, violence, and humor, was also the founder of “Cinema of Transgression,” which included similar, like-minded artists like Lydia Lunch, Casandra Stark, Tessa Hughes Freeland, and Tommy Turner. Zedd later wrote, designed, and published The Underground Film Bulletin (1984-1990) and later published “The Cinema of Transgression Manifesto” and “The Theory of Xenomorphosis.” His controversial Whoregasm is a “twelve-minute barrage of hardcore sex loops interspersed with bits of found footage, dizzying optical, and outtakes of Zedd’s own Police State.” For Zedd, the shock value that he created in his films was not just cinematic expressions; rather he wanted the audience to look honestly at the “freaks” on screen. He had once said that most underground filmmakers from his generation don’t deserve their “cutting-edge” label. Their protagonists are conventionally sexy; their female characters “all look like models.” “No amputees, no fat women,” Zedd said. “And they’re all white.”
Still from Whoregasm
Zedd remained an underground filmmaker and refused to kowtow to the commercialism of Hollywood and a sanitized New York under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In his later years, he moved to Mexico, as he was convinced that the underground art scenes that were part of New York had disappeared and art could only be created in the fringes. To quote his manifesto: “We propose that all film schools be blown up and all boring films never be made again. We propose that a sense of humour is an essential element discarded by the doddering academics and further, that any film which doesn’t shock isn’t worth looking at. All values must be challenged. Nothing is sacred. Everything must be questioned and reassessed in order to free our minds from the faith of tradition. Intellectual growth demands that risks be taken and changes occur in political, sexual, and aesthetic alignments no matter who disapproves.”
In the dark smoky bar, Ford and Zedd are grinning at the legacy they left behind, and a small Underground Club in a very red Midwestern state is attempting to keep that alive.
Zedd’s Whoregasm and Ford’s Johnny Minotaur will be screened at IU Cinema on November 2, comprising the program Taboo and Transgression, which is part of the Underground Film Series. This semester’s series will then conclude on November 16 with Catechism-ically Flawed, a program of shorts by Su Friedrich and Paula Gauthier.
Pragya Ghosh is a PhD student who is attempting to finish a dissertation but getting waylaid by too many transgressive films.