Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over (2019)

LYDIA LUNCH - The War Is Never Over by Beth B is 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 '70s, 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 by Beth B is 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 '70s, 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.

In 2017, Lydia Lunch and filmmaker Beth B joined forces to create LYDIA LUNCH - The War Is Never Over a retrospective of Lunch's confrontational, acerbic and always electric spoken word performance and music. The film frames Lunch's work through the lens of the various philosophical themes that have obsessed her for years to enlighten and empower women to voice the unheard and to break the cycle of violence toward women throughout the world. Lydia Lunch is the psycho-sexual transgressive who revoked patriarchal expectations of what a female performer might mean, while forging a vocabulary of rare emotional honesty, philosophy and humor.

Director Beth B has known and worked with No Wave legend Lydia Lunch since the late '70s when they broke boundaries in New York City, confronting audiences with uncensored poetry, music and films. Reflecting on the groundbreaking defiance Lydia Lunch has personified for over 30 years, she is a survivor who creates a dialogue of universal truth through her music and performances. In 1984, she penned the subversive and prescient spoken word piece, "Daddy Dearest", defying the gag order and spoke out about the sexual abuse she suffered as a young girl at the hands of her father. Lunch continues to expose the patriarchy, sexual abuse, the cycle of violence, and corporate greed with stubborn resistance.

In 1976, at age sixteen, Lydia Lunch arrived in the bankrupted ruins of NYC with the killer instincts of a born survivor, inspired by the ravings of Lester Bangs in Creem Magazine, the Velvet Underground's sarcastic wit, the glamour of the New York Dolls, and the poetic scat of Patti Smith's Piss Factory. Having escaped a disrupted and abusive childhood, Lunch's refusal to submit to anyone's will led her to forge her own reality on stage with the unprecedented brutality of Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - a central pillar of the No Wave music scene and a legendary name to this day. Everyone from Alan Vega and Martin Rev (Suicide), to the future luminaries of Sonic Youth, would embrace Lunch as the violent heartbeat of their art/music rebellion. When Brian Eno chose to produce the No New York compilation of 1978, Lunch was there as the shrieking voice and guitar fronting one of the most influential bands of the era: Teenage Jesus And The Jerks.

LYDIA LUNCH - The War is Never Over includes interviews with Lydia Lunch as well as some of her collaborators and colleagues including: Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth; performance artist Kembra Pfahler; Teenage Jesus bass player, Jim Sclavunos; Donita Sparks from L7; famed DJ and musician Nicolas Jaar; Art Critic Carlo McCormick; Filmmaker Richard Kern and a long list of other groundbreaking artists connected to Lunch's past and present.

Filming in rehearsal and on tour with her band Retrovirus, the behind-the-scenes footage reveals a side of Lunch's personality that has been unseen. Her warmth and generosity in private interactions along with hilarious banter in the rehearsal studio with band members contrasts wonderfully with her brash, assaultive style of performance.