The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

Colour, DIGIBETA
USA, France, 2011, 75 min
Section: 2011: A Musical Odyssey

Synopsis

Back in the late 1970s the band Throbbing Gristle was described by a British MP as "wreckers of civilization.” Its founder Genesis P-Orridge is radical, innovative and intellectually uncompromising to this day. The film by American director Marie Losier also tells his life story as defined by his shared "polysexual experiment.” Genesis and his wife decided to undergo a series of operations in an endeavour to bring their bodies physically closer to one another, with the ultimate aim of entering a hermaphroditic state together (i.e. Genesis now has breasts). Genesis’s wife, however, died after one of her several operations. The director’s debut attracted a good deal of attention both in the film environment and on the contemporary art scene. Since its world premiere at the Berlinale 2011 it has been screened at various important film, music and broad-spectrum art events.

About the director

Marie Losier (b. 1972, France) lives in New York where she works as a filmmaker and curator. She has made a number of film portraits of avant-garde musicians, film and stage artists, among them Mike and George Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman, Tony Conrad and, most recently, Genesis P-Orridge. Her work has been shown at international galleries such as MoMA in New York, the Whitney Museum, P.S. 1, La Fondation Cartier, the Tate Modern and many others.