Editorial · the closing visual work of the Rozz Williams catalogue
approx. 650 words
Williams's final completed work. His work carried into film. The Premature Ejaculation performance art turned into a short film.
Pig is a 23-minute black-and-white short film directed by Nico B (the Dutch experimental filmmaker Nico Brouwer), completed in 1998 shortly before Rozz Williams's death on 1 April 1998 and released posthumously through Cult Epics (Nico B's own label) from 1999, first on VHS and later on DVD and Blu-ray. It is the closing visual work of the Williams catalogue and the logical extension of his work into film · the Premature Ejaculation performance art (the ritual performance, body practice, sustained duration and confrontation Williams had worked across 1981 to 1998, with Ron Athey as his main performance partner) carried into a short film, with Williams in the central role.
The film is continuous with Williams's industrial work while being its own thing within cinema. The black-and-white 16mm stock sets its look in high-contrast monochrome rather than the colour film of 1998 mainstream cinema. Williams's performance runs across the whole 23 minutes, carrying the work at the level of body practice and sustained confrontation; what the film argues is that industrial performance art can take the form of a film as its actual material rather than as a sideline.
The soundtrack matters for the Bureau's purposes. Largely Williams's own, continuous with the Premature Ejaculation work of 1981 to 1998, it runs at the same compressed intensity as his mature records · the F·07 power-electronics and F·09 death-industrial strands carried into film. The Bureau treats it as a marker for the industrial cinema that follows after 1998, and as the main Bureau-relevant film soundtrack of the period's American industrial scene.
The film sits within transgressive cinema. It runs close to the post-Pasolini Italian tradition (Pasolini's Salò, 1975, the obvious reference, with the queer-radical thread Williams had worked through Premature Ejaculation), to the post-Brakhage American experimental film (Stan Brakhage's extended experimental work, the American avant-garde Williams draws on), and to the late-1990s American underground around Cult Epics. The Bureau notes the context without adding commentary on how extreme it is: the work is documented, and the reading is left to the viewer.
Its 1998 completion and 1999 release place it exactly at the close of Williams's catalogue. His death on 1 April 1998 in Los Angeles, at 34, means Pig reached audiences only after his memorial entry was filed, so it belongs to the catalogue's posthumous reception rather than its active years. The Bureau holds it as the final completed work and the extension of the work into film; the later posthumous activity (Cleopatra reissues, Cult Epics distribution, various reissues) is the catalogue's afterlife rather than completed work.
Cult Epics matters for the film's life after 1999. Nico B founded it around 1997 as a transgressive and experimental film label, and Pig is one of its central titles. The label has carried the film into the present across VHS, DVD and Blu-ray, with documentary extras and context, keeping it in reach. The Bureau treats Cult Epics as a significant force in the distribution of transgressive cinema today.
Where it sits: the closing visual work and final completed piece of the Rozz Williams catalogue; the extension of his work into film; the Premature Ejaculation performance art turned into a short film; the main Bureau-relevant instance of industrial cinema from the late-twentieth-century American scene; close to transgressive cinema (the post-Pasolini, post-Brakhage tradition); and in continuing distribution through Cult Epics from 1999. The film closes Williams's 1981 to 1998 work at the exact moment its posthumous life begins.