presented in association with California College of the Arts
Free admission
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. – The Museum of Modern Art, Documentary Fortnight 2016
Beth B exploded onto the New York film scene in the late 1970s. Her breakthrough films, such as Black Box, Vortex and The Offenders, were shown at Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s, the New York Film Festival and Film Forum. These and more recent films have been shown at, and acquired by, the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA. Her early films, along with those of Jim Jarmusch and Amos Poe, are the focus of the documentary film Blank City (Celine Danhier, 2010). Her films have been the subjects of several books and other documentaries including The Cinema of Transgression; Art, Performance, Media; and No Wave: Underground 80. Beth B’s career has been characterized by work that challenges society’s conventions and that focuses on social issues and human rights. Beth B's Call Her Applebroog (Zeitgeist Films) reveals renowned artist Ida Applebroog’s groundbreaking artwork that has been a sustained enquiry into the polemics of human relations, but more intimately, it is about her dramatic struggle to overcome adversity.
Call Her Applebroog_Trailer from Beth B on Vimeo.