VIA PRESS RELEASE | The War is Never Over, the first career-spanning documentary retrospective of the artist and spoken-word poet Lydia Lunch, will open at New York’s IFC Center on June 30 as well as nationwide in both theaters and virtual cinemas through KinoMarquee.com. Directed by prolific No Wave filmmaker Beth B, the film made its festival premiere last year to high acclaim as an official selection at the SXSW Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival. Lunch will be on tour concurrent with the release of the film in select cities.
The War is Never Over traces Lunch’s beginnings in the late 1970s New York City downtown scene with her band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, a central pillar of the No Wave music movement, and follows her storied career as an artist and legendary spoken-word poet—touching on her many collaborations with a diverse collective of artists, writers and musicians including Alan Vega (Suicide), Hubert Selby Jr., and Nick Cave and Sonic Youth. The film blends interviews with Lydia and those in her circle with archival footage of 1970s bands and photographs of New York City along with contemporary on-stage performances by Lunch.
“Lydia Lunch was 19 and I was 23 when we met in the late ‘70s New York music/film/art scene and brought our radical visions to the underground where we broke boundaries, simultaneously shocking and enticing our audiences with our uncensored music and films,” says Beth B in her director’s statement. “Fast forward to 2017, as I watched the ever brash and luminous Lydia Lunch performing with her extraordinary band, RETROVIRUS, I realized that I needed to make the definitive documentary about [her].”
Beth B is an award-winning director of independent feature-length documentary and narrative films whose career focuses on recasting and redefining concepts relating to the mind, the body and women’s issues. Controversial and political in approach and content, her recent films have been shown at venues including the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art along with festivals including Sundance, Berlin Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, SXSW and Locarno Film Festival. She has also served on the competition juries at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals.
