*The screening was cancelled due to tech problems, but here’s my intro*
Beth B. has been a vital figure of the New York underground scene since the late 1970s, with a body of film work including documentary, experimental, and narrative - and sometimes a combination of all three.
In a conversation with Interview Magazine last year, she said,
In a conversation with Interview Magazine last year, she said,
‘filmmaking has always been about power and control, and confronting the oppression of the patriarch. It’s definitely from a female point of view, it’s about the female gaze, and that’s why most of my films have very powerful women.’
Beth B.’s breakthrough films, which include Black Box (1978), Vortex (1981), and The Offenders (1980) - all co-directed with her then-husband Scott B. - have been screened at such famed New York venues as Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s, the New York Film Festival, and Film Forum, and have since been shown at - and acquired by - the Whitney Museum and MoMA. Her early work appeared in Celine Danhier’s 2009 documentary film Blank City, alongside work by Jim Jarmusch and Amos Poe, and more recently produced and directed 2019’s The War Is Never Over, a documentary about iconic performance artist and frequent collaborator Lydia Lunch. Speaking to Hyperallergic about Vortex’s status as the last new wave film made, she said:
‘What I’m doing is still No Wave. It’s a rejection of what is, and it’s embracing what is not: what we don’t see, what we don’t hear. My mode is to really bring those things to the fore.’
Salvation! - with the secondary title Have You Said Your Prayers Today? (1987) - was Beth B.’s first solo feature (she has made two solo features) and features a distinctive soundtrack featuring Cabaret Voltaire, Arthur Baker, and New Order (who did the theme) - the sort of film you will find on cult or restoration strands of festival circuits or television in the small hours.
In Beth B.’s glossy 80s parody of televangelism, unemployed, non-religious factory worker Jerome Stample (Viggo Mortensen) ropes in his sister-in-law (Dominique Davalos), to abduct and blackmail a sex-obsessed TV minister, Rev Randall (Stephen McHattie). Events take a bonkers turn when Randall meets Jerome’s religious wife, Rhonda (played by Exene Cervenka of the punk band X), and is immediately convinced she is an evangelical rock star in the making.
Salvation! is wild, scathing, and oddly prophetic because it was made before - but released after - the real-life scandals of televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart (Jim Bakker was portrayed by Andrew Garfield in Michael Showalter 2021’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye opposite Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Bakker).
In her chat with Interview, Beth B. said,
'In the eighties, when suddenly these fucking televangelists were taking over America, and nobody seemed to know it except the evangelists. I was like, “I’m going to do some investigating.” I went to Jerry Falwell’s church, the Super Conference, and I found myself so frightened that when he said, “Get down on your knees,” I got down on my knees. I was afraid someone was going to shoot me! Because I’m the enemy. So that film, Salvation! is based on that experience.'
Indeed, Salvation! is a crazy experience, made without apology, but there is a kernel of truth when you get beyond the madness that feels oddly unsettling and accurate. As Beth B. herself admits:
‘Salvation! is a wild film. I mean, just the pace of it. I watched it a few months ago. I hadn’t watched it in decades. I was like, “Wow, holy shit! How did I make this fucking wild film?” Because it’s really insane. It is. It’s also just so hilariously funny. Well, actually not funny, sadly, because it was so prescient that the same shit is still happening now. And worse.’
With a career spanning forty-five-years and exploring themes and exploring themes surrounding transphobia, domestic violence, and religious overreach, Beth B. continues to make politically charged and provocative films. And she has no desire to stop.
As she said last year:
‘I just can’t stop. It’s like my addiction. It’s a really phenomenal way of charting my journey through life. My films are, in some ways, very autobiographical. Even though they are not about me, they usually have some intense questions that I’m trying to work out in my life that the films somehow evolve from. And half the time, I don’t even know that when I’m starting to make a film, I just know I have a burning desire.’
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