Beth B

GLOWING by Beth B is not just a film, but an immersive, genre-defying experience that blurs the boundaries between documentary, narrative, experimental cinema, and music video.Eight fearless artists step into the frame — their voices raw, their stories electric. As poets, musicians, and performers reveal deeply personal truths, their stories collide and intertwine, forming a powerful, living dialogue with the audience. What unfolds is not simply storytelling, but an invitation: to feel, to witness, to connect.

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A viscerally poetic and sonically revelatory portrait of performance artist Evelyn Franti, the film brings the concept of pain and beauty into a searing work of physicality. Franti’s vocals are woven through the music of Jim Coleman creating a sonic foundation for the visual landscape.

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The first career-spanning documentary retrospective of Lydia Lunch's confrontational, acerbic and always electric artistry. As New York City's preeminent No Wave icon from the late 70's, Lunch has forged a lifetime of music and spoken word performance devoted to the utter right of any woman to indulge, seek pleasure, and to say "fuck you!" as loud as any man. In this time of endless attacks on women this is a rallying cry to acknowledge the only thing that is going to bring us together - ART...as the universal salve to all of our traumas.

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This deeply personal portrait of acclaimed New York–based artist Ida Applebroog was shot with mischievous reverence by her filmmaker daughter, Beth B. Born in the Bronx to Orthodox Jewish émigrés from Poland, Applebroog, now in her 80s, looks back at how she expressed herself through decades of drawings and paintings, as well as her private journals. With her daughter’s encouragement, she investigates the stranger that is her former self, a woman who found psychological and sexual liberation through art. As Beth B finds a deeper understanding of her mother as a human being, Applebroog shares a newfound appreciation for her own provocative work.

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Beth B takes us into the 21st century underground and reveals a secret world where cutting-edge performers are taking hold of a taboo art form, Burlesque, and driving it to extremes that most people have never seen. It's satire. It's parody. It's a populist blend of art and entertainment that gives new meaning to the word "transgression." Above all, it's a lot of fun, and it will blow your mind.

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Hysteria explores issues surrounding women's emotions and sexuality, and their social manifestations.

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Bravely bringing three severely traumatized Vietnam War veterans and their adult children back to Vietnam, this documentary explores rebirth and the reconciliation process, using raw, intense, and often revelatory scenes, captured in a vérité style, to confront a troubled past.

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Documentary feature by Beth B.

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Complete strangers meet in a room to act out their sexual desires.

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An intense study of the physical, psychological, and social breakdown of the human condition, this documentary questions a system that has lost its aspiration to reform.

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Under Lock and Key is the single-channel version of an installation that premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 1993. Using the "talking head" confessional as a stylistic device, B creates a social and psychological narrative wherein the act of speaking becomes therapeutic affirmation. B asked individuals who had suffered domestic violence to compose and read letters to those who had abused them. Their stories, addressed to their abusers and spoken directly to the camera, are intercut with comments by serial killer Ted Bundy and quotes from convicted murderer Jack Henry Abbott's prison memoir, In the Belly of the Beast.

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Intimate portraits of gay artists and drag performers talking about gender, identity, and all the fine lines around them. Beth B’s short film is a stirring reminder that drag-queen performances may be accepted in the mainstream today, but there was a time when they were strictly underground.

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Eileen Maloney, a hostess at a strip joint, has woken up to find her two children are missing. Lieutenant Bramm suspects that she killed them herself. He questions her for days about her lifestyle, her children, her ex-husband, men and women, and life in general. He forces her to re-enact her last moments in the children's room hoping to shock her into giving more information. The lieutenant's infatuation is not merely professional, however, and soon they are reversing roles.

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A stark and uncompromising portrayal of the escalation of xenophobic sentiment in a neo-conservative climate. Beth B refuses to preach and, by extension, to divide. The work trusts the ambiguity of art, rather than to assume a condescending position of knowledgeable correctness from which moral superiority might be inferred.

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Beth B, in collaboration with legendary downtown performance artist/musician Lydia Lunch, creates a chilling yet poetic vision of despairing nihilism -- literally, a "meditation on death." In this noirishly rendered narrative, a woman negotiates the banalities of life.

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A half dozen men and women, each addressing the camera directly and alone, speak of their involvement with drugs.

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A video full of swastikas, human skulls on American flag backdrops, girls frenching on department store mannequins and burning themselves with candles, military helmets and clomping boots, dudes masturbating under crucifixes, and a bunch of crotches.

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An experimental short by Beth B. It consists of rapidly intercut close-ups of talking heads reading statements from a Sigmund Freud case history; affidavits attesting to the atrocities of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi war criminal; and journals from the trial of New Yorker Joel Steinberg, accused of killing his adopted daughter.

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A troubled young woman hooks up with a money-crazed televangelist and becomes a rich, heavy-metal Christian rock star.

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A gang of leather-clad, powerful women take over a traditionally male domain, and hairspray, eyeliner, and bare flesh are on full display in Beth B’s music video for the Arthur Baker–produced club hit from synthpop band Dominatrix. Banned at the time of release, it was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art.

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An evocative portrait of people having orgasms, lingering on the silent classical face of ecstasy.

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A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Lunch (a popular underground musician and poet) plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real "corporate wars" and the manipulation of politicians.

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A Nietzschian parable on the fate of innocence, THE TRAP DOOR follows the mishaps of Jeremy (John Ahearn) as he is fired by his boss (Jenny Holzer), gets laughed out of court by Judge Gary Indiana, loses his girlfriend to sleazy Richard Prince, is hustled by prospective employer (Bill Rice) and mauled by predatory bird-women. Finally, he seeks the help of a shrink (the legendary Jack Smith) who turns out to be the most demented of all.

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A punk savage satire about a kidnapping.

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An innocent youth is abducted and dragged down into a dystopian nightmare where teenage Lydia Lunch throws him into the Black Box.

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The almost lyrical Letters to Dad, is a meditation on authority that superimposes the spectre of Jonestown over the relatively fresh faces of the parapunk art world; the film takes on a musical form - like a 20th-century ballad composed of subliminal behavior cues, advertising testimonials, and the text of the National Enquirer

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Short film by Scott B & Beth B showcasing Adele Bertei reading her poem, The Ragazzi Manifesto.

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An exploration of social schizophrenia in which terrorists consult their mothers before planting bombs, and the head of the New York City bomb squad succumbs to his dominatrix.

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In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood.

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the connections and energy flow between the various artists populating the 1980s sub-cultures of New York and Berlin. Features Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch, Blixa Bargeld, Alex Hacke, Gudrun Gut, Nick Cave, and others. An important film. Bravo, Mr. Dreher.

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Haxan Films-produced documentary on Richard Kern's work around 1997. Footage from his photo sessions, interviews with Kern and his models, etc. Features associates such as Lydia Lunch, Beth B and more.

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A scattershot documentary about punk rock film makers in New York, with contributions from Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, Richard Kern, Beth B, Nick Zedd and many others. A love letter to the New York Underground.

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An experimental short by Beth B. It consists of rapidly intercut close-ups of talking heads reading statements from a Sigmund Freud case history; affidavits attesting to the atrocities of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi war criminal; and journals from the trial of New Yorker Joel Steinberg, accused of killing his adopted daughter.

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A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Lunch (a popular underground musician and poet) plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real "corporate wars" and the manipulation of politicians.

Open details →

The first career-spanning documentary retrospective of Lydia Lunch's confrontational, acerbic and always electric artistry. As New York City's preeminent No Wave icon from the late 70's, Lunch has forged a lifetime of music and spoken word performance devoted to the utter right of any woman to indulge, seek pleasure, and to say "fuck you!" as loud as any man. In this time of endless attacks on women this is a rallying cry to acknowledge the only thing that is going to bring us together - ART...as the universal salve to all of our traumas.

Open details →

This deeply personal portrait of acclaimed New York–based artist Ida Applebroog was shot with mischievous reverence by her filmmaker daughter, Beth B. Born in the Bronx to Orthodox Jewish émigrés from Poland, Applebroog, now in her 80s, looks back at how she expressed herself through decades of drawings and paintings, as well as her private journals. With her daughter’s encouragement, she investigates the stranger that is her former self, a woman who found psychological and sexual liberation through art. As Beth B finds a deeper understanding of her mother as a human being, Applebroog shares a newfound appreciation for her own provocative work.

Open details →

Beth B takes us into the 21st century underground and reveals a secret world where cutting-edge performers are taking hold of a taboo art form, Burlesque, and driving it to extremes that most people have never seen. It's satire. It's parody. It's a populist blend of art and entertainment that gives new meaning to the word "transgression." Above all, it's a lot of fun, and it will blow your mind.

Open details →

Complete strangers meet in a room to act out their sexual desires.

Open details →