
Directing
Beth B
Known for
Directing
Credits
49 titles
During the late 1970s-early 1980s, Beth and Scott B were among the most significant proponents of the No-Wave, no-budget style of underground punk filmmaking. The feature films Beth B has since made on her own are ambitious in content.
Known for
5.4An innocent youth is abducted and dragged down into a dystopian nightmare where teenage Lydia Lunch throws him into the Black Box.
Black Box
1979
5.2Eileen 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.
Two Small Bodies
1993
6.6A troubled young woman hooks up with a money-crazed televangelist and becomes a rich, heavy-metal Christian rock star.
Salvation!
1987
4.0Beth 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.
Exposed
2013
6.3Real-life kung fu master Nathan Ingram stars in this gritty, low-budget martial arts epic as a local karate school owner who clashes with a gang of drug traffickers posing as the owners of a rival dojo. Director Charlie Ahearn (who helmed the landmark hip-hop film Wild Style) used the housing projects next to his New York Lower East Side apartment as his central location in this 1979 classic, shot on a vintage Super 8 camera.
The Deadly Art of Survival
1979
NRA half dozen men and women, each addressing the camera directly and alone, speak of their involvement with drugs.
Stigmata
1991
Film credits
1990s · 2 titles
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.
No Age New York
1993
NRHaxan 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.
Richard Kern - Portrait: Live From New York
1997
1980s · 2 titles
8.0An 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.
Belladonna
1989
5.7A 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.
Vortex
1982
1970s · 3 titles
6.3Real-life kung fu master Nathan Ingram stars in this gritty, low-budget martial arts epic as a local karate school owner who clashes with a gang of drug traffickers posing as the owners of a rival dojo. Director Charlie Ahearn (who helmed the landmark hip-hop film Wild Style) used the housing projects next to his New York Lower East Side apartment as his central location in this 1979 classic, shot on a vintage Super 8 camera.
The Deadly Art of Survival
1979
8.0The almost lyrical Letters to Dad, is a meditation on authority that superimposes the spectre of a recent event 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
Letters to Dad
1979
The "No New York Festival" on a tour of Europe. This concert is at SO36, Kreuzberg, Berlin, where a sprawling variety of bands and musicians related to the NNNF performed.
No New York Festival - Berlin
1979
Behind the camera
5.4An innocent youth is abducted and dragged down into a dystopian nightmare where teenage Lydia Lunch throws him into the Black Box.
Black Box
1979
5.4An innocent youth is abducted and dragged down into a dystopian nightmare where teenage Lydia Lunch throws him into the Black Box.
Black Box
1979
5.4An innocent youth is abducted and dragged down into a dystopian nightmare where teenage Lydia Lunch throws him into the Black Box.
Black Box
1979
5.2Eileen 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.
Two Small Bodies
1993
5.2Eileen 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.
Two Small Bodies
1993
5.2Eileen 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.
Two Small Bodies
1993
6.6A troubled young woman hooks up with a money-crazed televangelist and becomes a rich, heavy-metal Christian rock star.
Salvation!
1987
6.6A troubled young woman hooks up with a money-crazed televangelist and becomes a rich, heavy-metal Christian rock star.
Salvation!
1987
6.6A troubled young woman hooks up with a money-crazed televangelist and becomes a rich, heavy-metal Christian rock star.
Salvation!
1987
4.0Beth 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.
Exposed
2013
4.0Beth 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.
Exposed
2013
NRA half dozen men and women, each addressing the camera directly and alone, speak of their involvement with drugs.
Stigmata
1991
7.0The Offenders is a raucous punk satire of the teenager-leaves-home genre. As in the detached and aloof manner of Andy Warhol's underground films, it tells an amusingly deadpan story centred on the kidnapping of a young woman named Laura and her abusive, controlling father. An out-of-control gang of punk hoodlums flesh out the cast.
The Offenders
1980
NRDocumentary feature by Beth B.
Voices Unheard
1998
NRA 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.
Amnesia
1992
7.0The 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.
Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over
2019
8.0An 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.
Belladonna
1989
2.3A 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.
American Nightmare
1991
5.7A 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.
Vortex
1982
5.7A 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.
Vortex
1982
NRHysteria explores issues surrounding women's emotions and sexuality, and their social manifestations.
Hysteria
2001
NRA 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.
The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight
1984
NRA 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.
The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight
1984
NRShort film by Scott B & Beth B showcasing Adele Bertei reading her poem, The Ragazzi Manifesto.
The Ragazzi Manifesto
1978
NRUnder 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.
Under Lock and Key
1994
8.0The almost lyrical Letters to Dad, is a meditation on authority that superimposes the spectre of a recent event 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
Letters to Dad
1979
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.
Thanatopsis
1991
NRGLOWING 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.
Glowing
2026
NRA 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.
Glowing Evelyn
2023
NRAn evocative portrait of people having orgasms, lingering on the silent classical face of ecstasy.
Voyeur
1983
3.0An 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.
G-Man
1978
3.0An 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.
G-Man
1978
NRThis 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.
Call Her Applebroog
2016
NRThis 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.
Call Her Applebroog
2016
NRIntimate 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.
High Heel Nights
1994
7.0A 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.
The Trap Door
1980
7.0A 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.
The Trap Door
1980
7.0A 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.
The Trap Door
1980
NRAn 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.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
1995
NRBravely 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.
Breathe In, Breathe Out
2001

