The Film
It’s Not Easy Being Strange is a feature-length documentary told from within the scene, exploring the music and culture of the goth subculture over the past nearly 50 years. The film traces the origins of goth, its growth, and shows how it has remained a welcoming space for outsiders to the present day.
Told through a grassroots lens, the film focuses on real voices from within the goth community and key cultural moments. Drawing on the director’s background as a musician, the documentary offers an insider’s view of the scene's history, its ongoing counterculture influence, what it looks like today, and the future challenges it may face.
Why This Film Now?
Most documentation on goth focuses on its emergence in the late 1970s and 1980s. While that period is important, it represents only the beginning of a much longer story. What followed from the 1990s onwards has been far less consistently recorded, leaving large parts of goth’s later history at risk of being overlooked, simplified, or rewritten through nostalgia rather than lived experience. Many of the people who built and sustained the scene during these years have never been formally documented, despite their lasting influence.
Even though it has been ignored by the mainstream, it has continually grown, adapted, and endured. By capturing voices, experiences, and perspectives now, the film aims to preserve a history that is still unfolding and to reflect the resilience of the underground community.
Vision & Tone
It’s Not Easy Being Strange follows the perspective of a present-day musician in a UK goth band, providing a narrative thread that guides the viewer from its origins to today. From this insider viewpoint, the film explores collective memories, landmark events, and key cultural moments that have shaped the scene, tracing the evolution of goth music and culture from its roots to the present day.
Visually, the film focuses on mood, detail, and emotion, capturing the atmosphere of goth life, spaces, and events, offering a lived experience from a community-led perspective. Alongside interviews that allow contributors to reflect on their personal connections to the scene, archival photographs and footage are woven together with newly shot material from concerts, clubs, festivals, and everyday moments. These elements link goth’s past and present, challenge stereotypes and misconceptions, and show the culture not as a closed chapter, but as something living, evolving, and ongoing.
The Director - Teresa Dead
Music has always been a big part of my life, both as a fan and as a musician in my goth band, Zeitgeist Zero. Originally from Belfast, I’ve found an adopted home in Leeds, a city whose goth and musical heritage has become a cornerstone of my creative work. I trained as a filmmaker because I also wanted to express myself visually, and our live shows have always included video projection as part of the experience. I’ve directed numerous short films and music videos, but It’s Not Easy Being Strange will be my first feature-length documentary merging my two greatest passions, film and music.
I became part of the goth scene around the year 2000. I loved the music and also found a supportive, creative community where I’ve made lifelong friends. When I watched documentary coverage about the subculture, I was struck by how narrow the story is often told. The focus is heavily on the late 1970s and 1980s, centred on UK origins and first-wave bands. While that history is important, it didn’t reflect my own experience as a goth in an evolving scene in the 21st century.
I’ve noticed that many people outside the scene have strong opinions about goth. I’ve been mocked online multiple times, with people insisting it’s just for teenagers. When my band was interviewed by BBC 6 Music alongside Alien Sex Fiend, listeners messaged in to declare “goth is dead,” as if it were a fleeting musical phenomenon like disco in the 1970s. It was completely at odds with my reality. Goth, like its contemporaries, such as hip-hop and heavy metal, may have emerged in the early 1980s, but it didn’t end there. Just like those genres, it continues to grow, change, and sustain communities across generations. From the sparse film coverage and TV programmes concentrating on one decade, I can see how this idea has arisen.
As a filmmaker, musician, and goth, I’m tired of outsiders telling our story. I want to show our world from an insider's point of view by documenting the voices of people who have shaped, created and sustained the subculture.
How To Support This Film?
It’s Not Easy Being Strange is being made independently, supported in part by Leeds City Council Cultural Programme.
To take the film forward and capture voices and stories, it needs your support. Funds raised will go directly into:
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Filming across the UK and Europe
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Archival access and licensing
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Editing and post-production
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Making the film accessible, with subtitles in multiple languages
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Marketing and promotion
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Film festival submissions
This is a film for people who are part of the goth scene, past or present. Anyone interested in underground music, subcultures, and the history of Leeds. See how the UK played a pivotal role in this international subculture.
Please Do The Following
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Back the crowdfunding campaign
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Share the project
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Join the mailing list
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Follow the film on social media
Photo Credits
Photographs on this site were kindly contributed by members of the goth community following a social media call-out.Thank you to the following individuals for permission to use their images; DJ Gillywoo, Matt Hart, Sam Harrison (Hurtsfall), D-Ject & Miss Plastik (Bunker 13), Jay Smith (Deviant), Trevor Bamford (Chaos Bleak), Wallemina Von Dutchland, Lee Edward Armstrong, Faith Vickers, Anika MacRae, David Tetard, Andy Hann, Guy Fenney, Max Orrel, Lex Carringon.
Photo of Zeitgeist Zero by Giles Edsall
