A Way to Die: The Films of Peter Christopherson and John Balance

Founders of Coil, a cult entity of experimental industrial British music, Peter Christopherson and John Balance also directed films from 1970 to 1980, exhumed and restored by Timeless. Shot on 8 and 16mm film, these unclassifiable subversive marvels, unsettling and trippy, garbed in gay masochist aesthetics, are as much family films, performances, body horror and urban nightmares. They're above all characterized by a tormented imagination under the sign of Eros and Thanatos with an irrepressible taste for death. There was an empty space next to Antony Balch, Derek Jarman and Jean Genet : it's no longer vacant. Maxime Lachaud and Reivaks Timeless deliver a unique document, haunted by the duo’s music, with this one way journey into limbo, where they’re joined by the recently deceased Monte Cazazza, a founding father of the concept of industrial music.

Directed by Reivaks Timeless, Maxime Lachaud, A Way to Die: The Films of Peter Christopherson and John Balance leans on a strong ensemble — Peter Christopherson, John Balance, Monte Cazazza — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about documentary titles of 2023.