Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over
Beth B
New York City, NY | 2021 | 77 | DCP
This film 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 raise voice in a rage as loud as any man. 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 psychosexual transgressive who revoked patriarchal expectations of what a female performer might mean, while forging a vocabulary of rare emotional honesty, philosophy, and humor.