Color Me Barbara, Retrospective at NewsFest, NY
October 26, 2019 at 11:30AM
Cinépolis Chelsea – Theater 8
260 W 23rd St. New York, NY 10011
The first of her kind, the lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer paid homage to queer history, bodies, and subculture for over 50 years. During a retrospective of her work at New York Film Festival in 2017, Hammer expressed excitement that a void in the queer film pantheon was “now being filled by courageous, queer, wonderful, diverse, expansive lesbian, gay, and trans community.” This, in part, was her doing. An adored mentor, Hammer intentionally fostered a robust lineage of lesbian and queer filmmakers. This shorts program is an introduction to the next generation of radical lesbian and queer filmmakers.
COLOR ME BARBARA pairs Hammer’s works, memorable and underseen, with recent shorts by the latest and greatest experimental filmmakers who have been nourished by her films and friendship, including Scott Miller Berry, Joey Carducci, Liz Rosenfeld, Sasha Wortzel, and the winners of the Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaker Grant, Fair Brane and Miatta Kawinzi. By becoming the first, Hammer ensured we would never go without.
Total Running Time: 70 min
Presented in partnership with The Bush Films.
Dir. Barbara Hammer, USA, 1993, 1:14, English
A brief, rhythmic play on words, Hammer’s safe sex film makes a compelling case for ‘no glove, no love.’
Dir. Miatta Kawinzi, USA, 2013, 4:12, English
A deconstruction of the US national anthem that uses the artist’s performativity, musicality, and ethnic heritage as a launching point to think through the diasporic condition, US-Liberia aesthetic and historical connections, and the notion of home.
Dir. Barbara Hammer, USA, 1974, 4:00, English
A celebrated and playful look at sapphic communalism in the 1970s, famously described by Hammer as a ‘lesbian commercial.’
Dir. Liz Rosenfeld, USA, 2005, 7:00, English
A modern riff on Hammer’s Dyketactics, pleasantly updated for the urban queer era.
Dir. Scott Miller Berry, Canada, 2002, 5:25, English
Gay boys need tactics, too. Fagtactics takes us on an irrevent electronic romp along Canada’s traintracks.
Dir. Barbara Hammer, USA, 1976, 22:39, English
A series of cameo portraits of the filmmaker’s friends and lovers intercut with a playful celebration of fruits and vegetables in nature. Culminating footage evokes a tantric painting of sexuality sustained.
Dir. Sasha Wortzel, USA, 2010, 5:15, English
A house shared for 40 years and now the home of only one surviving partner, becomes museum-like, meticulously arranged and decorated, full of objects like artifacts that hold memories and hint at a shared life that is now gone.
Dir. Barbara Hammer, USA, 1993, 3:00, English
A meditation on Barbara Hammer’s relationship to the celebrated child actor whose high-profile career dominated her childhood—and her parents’ highest hopes.
Dir. Joey Carducci, USA, 2018, 15:49, English
A tender coming out note to Barbara Hammer from a transgender mentee that transforms Hammer’s leftover footage into an intimate conversation.
Dir. Fair Brane, USA, 2017, 1:19, English
An ethereal look at the sharp divides between the binaries of material and scarcity, matter and atmosphere, stillness and movement.
Q&A to follow