Beth B

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

Black Box poster
5.4

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

Black Box

1979

Two Small Bodies poster
5.2

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.

Two Small Bodies

1993

Salvation! poster
6.6

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

Salvation!

1987

Exposed poster
4.0

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.

Exposed

2013

The Deadly Art of Survival poster
6.3

Real-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

Stigmata poster
NR

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

Stigmata

1991

Film credits

1970s · 3 titles

Behind the camera

Black Box poster
5.4

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

Black Box

1979

Black Box poster
5.4

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

Black Box

1979

Black Box poster
5.4

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

Black Box

1979

Two Small Bodies poster
5.2

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.

Two Small Bodies

1993

Two Small Bodies poster
5.2

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.

Two Small Bodies

1993

Two Small Bodies poster
5.2

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.

Two Small Bodies

1993

Salvation! poster
6.6

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

Salvation!

1987

Salvation! poster
6.6

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

Salvation!

1987

Salvation! poster
6.6

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

Salvation!

1987

Exposed poster
4.0

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.

Exposed

2013

Exposed poster
4.0

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.

Exposed

2013

Stigmata poster
NR

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

Stigmata

1991

The Offenders poster
7.0

The 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

Voices Unheard poster
NR

Documentary feature by Beth B.

Voices Unheard

1998

Amnesia poster
NR

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.

Amnesia

1992

Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over poster
7.0

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.

Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over

2019

Belladonna poster
8.0

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.

Belladonna

1989

American Nightmare poster
2.3

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.

American Nightmare

1991

Vortex poster
5.7

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.

Vortex

1982

Vortex poster
5.7

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.

Vortex

1982

Hysteria poster
NR

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

Hysteria

2001

The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight poster
NR

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.

The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight

1984

The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight poster
NR

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.

The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight

1984

The Ragazzi Manifesto poster
NR

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

The Ragazzi Manifesto

1978

Under Lock and Key poster
NR

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.

Under Lock and Key

1994

Letters to Dad poster
8.0

The 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

No artwork available
NR

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

Glowing poster
NR

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.

Glowing

2026

Glowing Evelyn poster
NR

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.

Glowing Evelyn

2023

Voyeur poster
NR

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

Voyeur

1983

G-Man poster
3.0

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.

G-Man

1978

G-Man poster
3.0

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.

G-Man

1978

Call Her Applebroog poster
NR

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.

Call Her Applebroog

2016

Call Her Applebroog poster
NR

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.

Call Her Applebroog

2016

High Heel Nights poster
NR

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.

High Heel Nights

1994

The Trap Door poster
7.0

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.

The Trap Door

1980

The Trap Door poster
7.0

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.

The Trap Door

1980

The Trap Door poster
7.0

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.

The Trap Door

1980

Out of Sight, Out of Mind poster
NR

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.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

1995

Breathe In, Breathe Out poster
NR

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.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

2001