BETH B

                                                                                                                  

Artist and filmmaker Beth B is a legend of New York's underground No Wave scene — a radical, DIY movement defined by stark minimalism, dissonant soundtracks, and a confrontational, anti-establishment sensibility. Over a 45-plus-year career, B has directed more than 29 films across documentary, experimental, and narrative genres, alongside interdisciplinary work exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide. Critics at the New York Times, Rolling Stone, the LA Times, and the Village Voice have called her work "compelling," "captivating," "unflinching," and "a tour de force." Her films and artwork have been the subject of several books and documentaries, including Blank City, The Cinema of Transgression, and No Wave: Underground '80.

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In 2026, B premiered GL0WING at the Roxy Cinema, NYC — an immersive, genre-defying feature blurring documentary, narrative, experimental cinema, and music video. In 2024, she mounted a major exhibition at Silent Green, Berlin, with nine new film installations and a full retrospective, including a live performance of Glowing with musician Jim Coleman. In 2022–23, MoMA and the Metrograph Theater, NYC, celebrated her career with a retrospective showcasing newly restored 4K masters of her narrative features Two Small Bodies (1994), starring Suzy Amis and the late Fred Ward, and Salvation! (1987), a social satire starring Viggo Mortensen and Exene Cervenka that prefigured pop culture's fascination with televangelism. In 2023, Le Centre Pompidou, Paris, honored B's work as part of its No Wave New Media Exhibition. In 2022, NYU's Fales Library acquired her entire archive, and in 2021, Kino Lorber Distribution acquired her full catalogue for restoration and distribution.

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B has received honors and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2022), the "Made in NY" Women's Film, TV and Theatre Fund (2019), the National Endowment for the Arts (multiple years), the Lannan Foundation (1998), the Jerome Foundation (1995), Anonymous Was a Woman (1991), and the New York State Council on the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts (various years), among others. Her 2019 feature documentary Lydia Lunch – The War Is Never Over — a retrospective of Lydia Lunch's confrontational spoken-word performance and music, made in collaboration with Lunch — received a New York Times Critic's Pick, won the International Jury Award at the Barcelona In-Edit Festival, was IDA Award–nominated, and played SXSW 2020; it has screened in over 50 theaters, is available on VOD/DVD, and inspired a companion book from Jawbone Press. Two Small Bodies was nominated for the Golden Leopard at Locarno (1993), and Exposed was nominated for the Teddy Award at Berlin and the Metropolis Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC (2013).

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B's films have premiered at major festivals worldwide, including Call Her Applebroog (NYT Critic's Pick, world premiere at MoMA), Salvation! (Berlinale, 1987), Breathe In/Breathe Out (IFFR, 2000), Visiting Desire (Toronto FF and Berlinale, 1996), and Voices Unheard (MoMA, 1998). Her work has also screened at Sundance FF, SXSW, and DOC NYC with retrospectives at institutions including London's National Film Theatre, Nouveau Cinéma de Montréal, and the Danish Film Institute. She has served on juries at Toronto, Sundance, and the Tel Aviv Film Festivals, and her screenplay Life in Luxury was selected for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.

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Concurrent with her independent work, B has produced and directed network television documentaries and large-scale media installations, exhibited at MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Whitney Biennial, the Hayward Gallery, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Pompidou Center, Deitch Projects, and PPOW Gallery. In 2022, she directed the theater production 52 Jokers across venues in Hamburg, Groningen, Berlin, and Vienna, then curated ten days of programming at A Family of Humans Festival in Switzerland. In 2016, she premiered Call Her Applebroog, an intimate portrait of her mother, artist Ida Applebroog, distributed by Zeitgeist Films and featured in the New York Times and Vogue. In 2013, she produced and directed Exposed, a nonfiction feature about underground performance artists redefining gender norms, which premiered at DOC NYC and screened in over 20 countries.

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From 2001 to 2008, B produced and directed television documentaries — including Positive ID: The Case Files of Anthony Falsetti, Family Secrets, Crime Scenes Uncovered (as Senior Series Producer, TLC), and An Unlikely Terrorist — and created short documentaries for ZDF, ARTE, the Sundance Channel, and PBS, including High Heel Nights for ARTE France. Earlier career highlights include Breathe In/Breathe Out (2000, war and trauma) and Voices Unheard (1998, juvenile sex offenders), and a body of work merging documentary and fiction: Belladonna (1989), a collaboration with Ida Applebroog invited to the Whitney Biennial; Thanatopsis (1991), written by and featuring Lydia Lunch; and Stigmata (1991), on drug abuse and recovery.

 

B has received numerous commissions, including Hysteria at the Hayward Gallery's "Spectacular Bodies" (2001); Amnesia, commissioned by the Whitney Museum and the American Center in Paris (1991) and later reimagined as an installation at the Wexner Center alongside Under Lock and Key (1993); Take My Breath Away for BAM's Next Wave Festival (1997); and site-specific installations at Temple Gallery, Philadelphia, and the Eastern State Penitentiary (1995). In 1990, she produced two public art projects funded by Creative Time CityWide: Day of Hope, a newspaper reporting only hopeful news, and Surgeon General's Warning, a poster series addressing abortion, censorship, AIDS, racism, and homelessness.

 

Beth B has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and Montclair State University.