Frameline48: Teaches of Peaches

Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at this year’s Berlinale, this absorbing film offers a playful, all-encompassing syllabus for the 20 years of diddling our skittles and fucking the pain away to The Teaches of Peaches. Featuring interviews from collaborators, admirers, and lovers alike (including Leslie Feist, Chilly Gonzalez, and Shirley Manson), this rousing portrait of the musician/performer Peaches (née Merrill Nisker) traces her life and career from her days as a Canadian schoolteacher to becoming a cult star in the Berlin underground scene to her life today, as she prepares for the anniversary tour of her breakthrough LP, The Teaches of Peaches.

Through candid interviews, Peaches sheds light on her sexuality, her onstage persona, and how she found her voice musically through trial and error. A bisexual woman, now in her 50s, Peaches’ music and shows remain as aggressively sexual as they always were; and we learn that being a woman in the music industry who dares to sing about sexuality is an inherently political act. What other lessons lie ahead in the further Teaches of Peaches, you ask? Huh? What?