The Teaches of Peaches – Coming soon…

Posted by Philipp on 20 20, 2023 in fff, FILM, NEWS @en | 0 comments

Peaches – musician, producer, director, performance artist, rock star.

A queer-feminist icon, Peaches has spent two decades pushing boundaries, carving a bold, sexually progressive path in her own image that has opened the door for countless others to follow. While being a strong influence on pop culture, she has however always been at odds with the mainstream. Some of her lyrics and performances have been rejected due to them being potentially offensive. Peaches has always polarized with her sexpositive shows and explicit lyrics and has attracted misfits and ‘freaky people’ from the start making her an important voice for the queer community.

In 2000, Merrill Nisker takes a trip to Berlin, buys a synth, renames herself Peaches and, recovering from cancer and heartbreak, records an album in her bedroom.

It might be one of the most famous opening lines of all time, at least from the millennium, that she creates there: “Suckin’ on my titties like you wanted me ..”

Instead of writing a sad breakup album, she decides to “Fuck the Pain Away” and live her dream to move to Berlin and become a full-time musician. Her most popular song and genuine fist pumper holds a deeper meaning for her personal journey, which takes her back and forth between Germany and Canada. We meet the 2000s Peaches in a hotel packing her tiny suitcase ready to go on tour all by herself. From a cockroach infested house in Toronto to dark sweaty Berlin clubs, we follow Peaches take on the male dominated music industry and doing things her way.

20 years later, “The Teaches of Peaches” is considered one of the most influential rock albums of the early 2000s. “Fuck the Pain Away”, has long become a sex-positive anthem featured in movies and TV shows. Since the release of the album on German label Kitty-Yo, a lot has changed. Slowly but surely, the LGBTQAI+ community has gained mainstream visibility alongside with sexpositivity and gender fluidity, topics that were still too much for the mainstream in the year 2000. At the same time, a conservative backlash is in the air with anti-abortion, anti-queer, anti-trans voices getting louder.

We meet present-day Peaches in her Berlin flat, and she is packing to go on tour again. But not any tour – her 20-year anniversary tour of “The Teaches of Peaches”. The 55-year-old self-proclaimed rock’n’roll grandma is getting ready to teach again and the message is loud and clear as ever. Still in spandex bodysuits and camel toe she surrounds herself with old friends and a new team of musicians and dancers and sets out again with a general full-frontal ‘fuck you’ to the patriarchy.

The documentary THE TEACHES OF PEACHES // FUCK THE PAIN AWAY is the first full-length film about this extraordinary artist, a turbulent mix of tour documentary, live concert, and never seen before footage from Peaches’ personal archives. It allows an intimate glimpse into the life of a touring artist then and now, with her fellow artists and long-time friends Chilly Gonzales, Leslie Feist, Shirley Manson, and Charlie le Mindu shining a light on the private, intelligent person behind the loud flamboyant stage persona. With lots of humour and a striking sensitivity, Peaches faces the challenges of tour-life with her unusual team. After touring the US, she finally comes full circle playing a concert in Berlin, where it all began. In a wild celebration with hairy pussy creatures and a giant ejaculating dick, Peaches teaches self-love and free expression giving people from all walks of life space to “Fuck the Pain Away” – to find a way to exist and enjoy it.