Jon Moritsugu

American underground "cult" film director, screenwriter and indie/punk musician (b. 15 February 1965, Honolulu, Hawaii). Jon Moritsugu, one of the members of Nick Zedd's "Cinema of Transgression" movement, has directed eight feature-length films and several shorts, including TV on The Radio's No Future Shock 2011 music video. Moritsugu is praised for lo-fi aesthetics and his satiric "protopunk deconstructions" of popular genres, with some critics drawing parallels between his works and the nihilism of Jean-Luc Godard and Guy Debord. Jon Moritsugu is married to actress, writer, stylist and designer Amy Davis, who starred in many of his films. Amy and Jon play together in a lo-fi indie garage rock band Low On High. (In 1997–98, Moritsugu also briefly fronted the No-No Boy punk band with Mike Masatsugu and Andy Matinog). Jon Moritsugu began filming in high school and studied semiotics and critical theory at Brown University. He graduated in 1987, and Jon's senior thesis short film, Der Elvis, was subsequently described by The New York Times as "a 23-minute jolt of highly controlled chaos." The production of his debut feature, My Degeneration (1990), was interrupted by a conveyor belt accident that severed the director's right arm, forcing a lengthy post-op recovery. The movie was screened at Sundance Film Festival and ranked among the "25 Greatest Punk Rock Movies of All Time" by Rolling Stone. His films have been screened at prestigious independent and underground festivals and museums, from the Internationaal Filmfestival Rotterdam to MoMA, Whitney Museum Of American Art, and Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. Jon Moritsuga received several accolades, including "Best Features" and a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at Chicago and New York Underground Film Festivals.