Director & Editor

Zieman directed & edited this music video in ’81 for Klaus Nomi, a performance artist with an unusual operatic-style soprano voice, well-loved in Berlin and Downtown NYC, still revered as a cult legend today.

Klaus performed with David Bowie, live and on SNL in ’80. He was one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS.

Here Zieman demonstrates a facility for using video feedback flourishes in a controlled manner, with blooming title effects, and ghostly melting images.

Zieman directed and produced this award-winning documentary starring Edward Norton, Diane Von Furstenberg, Mayor Bloomberg, and many others, in the crucial years before The High Line was funded and approved, to great success. It was un-missable, viewed by over 1,000 commuters a day, projected large in a dark theater created between 2 massive highway billboards, erected inside NYC’s Grand Central Station. Featuring notable expert voices from architecture, urban planning, Parks Dept., including city, state, & national politicians. Zieman filmed the entire High Line, walking with a Steadicam, as an overgrown wreck, already slated to be demolished. This film helped galvanize public opinion toward making the abandoned elevated train track into today’s park, now the third most popular tourist site in NYC. (Music by John Petersen)

Zieman directed this for Def Jam label in 1989. Though times would soon change, during production he had to battle with the band — they suspected he was making them look “too Slick” and styled. Unforgettably, there were guns in the edit room. Lensed by Manfred Reiff.

Zieman directed, edited, and post-produced this female-centric initiative for the New School, using green screen, morphs, and innovative animation software. “The New Historia is an initiative designed to document and promote the achievements of women in history that have gone unnoticed or unrecognized by our larger society. Led by Gina Luria Walker, a professor of Women’s Studies at The New School, the initiative will use a searchable digital platform to connect today’s young women with the unknown female groundbreakers of the past.”