An East Village filmmaker who moved to Mexico City six years ago is fighting eviction by one of the world’s wealthiest men, Carlos Slim.
Nick Zedd, director of “They Eat Scum” and “Geek Maggot Bingo,” is the last holdout in the Hotel Virreyes, which is being renovated to reopen next year for “digital nomads, perpetual travelers or occasional escapists,” according to its new management.
While Slim owns the hotel, the Selina hotel and hostel chain is refurbishing it and operating it.
The Museum of Modern Art is scheduled to screen four of Zedd’s films next month as part of “Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983,” but the auteur is staying put in Mexico.
“I refuse to be thrown out onto the street with all of my films, books and paintings,” Zedd e-mailed friends.
Zedd, who lives with son Zerak and the child’s mother, is not a Mexican citizen.
He fears that if he leaves Mexico, he might not be able to return. “I am a pariah, therefore too dangerous to be allowed to move freely in the world of cyphers, conformists and pigs.”
Zedd’s friend, artist Clayton Patterson, told me, “Mexico was going to be the land of hope and glory, but gentrification in Mexico City is as brutal as in New York City.”