This retrospective of the queer and feminist cinema pioneer, icon, and activist Barbara Hammer covers her work ranging from the early 1970s – when the director brought the body and the lesbian nude to the screen, creating truly subversive art for that time – to her most recent films made in the 21st century. Barbara Hammer’s films are the result of an experimental search for tools to challenge stereotypes about gender roles, lesbian identity, and sexuality and expose the historical exclusion of non-heteronormative people from public space. Her work features bold erotica used as a political tool in the fight for equality. Suitable for adult audiences only.

Marie and Me / USA, 1970, 9 min

One of Barbara Hammer’s first film experiments. A sun-filled image of an intimate relationship with the artist’s first partner – Marie. The film touches on the subject of the body, touch, eroticism and closeness. It is a performance of everyday life accompanied by a film camera, recording the joyful adventures of two heroines. By bringing the body and the lesbian act to the screen, Hammer was making truly subversive art in the early 1970s. During this period, lesbians were completely absent from both Hollywood and independent films. The seemingly simple gesture of illustrating the pleasure of spending time with a partner is also a political stance regarding the visibility of non-heteronormative women in public space, introducing them to the screen.

One of Barbara Hammer’s early films. A sun-filled, joyful image of an intimate relationship with the artist’s first partner – Marie. The image of the adventures of those two protagonists. The film shows the experience of the body, touch, eroticism and closeness.

Dyketactics / USA, 1974, 4 min

“Dyketactics” is the manifesto of Barbara Hammer, who liked to joke that it was her lesbian advertisement – a film “shamelessly appropriating the space of cinema for women’s pleasures: both those depicted on screen and those that were supposed to be experienced by women in the audience.” A pioneering articulation of queer aesthetics film of women. It consists of two parts – the first one showing a group of naked or half-naked women enjoying spending time together in nature. The heroines are dancing, combing each other’s hair, hugging each other, and wading in the water women, conveying the experience of touch and using an aesthetic that opposes male, objectifying visual pleasure. This short film is described as the first literally erotic film in the history of cinema depicting non-heteronormative women and shot by a person who openly identifies herself as a lesbian.

“Hammer’s films of the ’70’s ​​are the first made by an openly lesbian American filmmaker to explore lesbian identity, desire and sexuality though avant-garde strategies. Merging the physicality of the female body with that of the film medium, Hammer’s films remain memorable for their pioneering articulation of a lesbian aesthetic.” – Jenni Sorkin, WACK! Art and The Feminist Revolution, 2007.

Jane Brakhage / USA, 1974, 10 min

The film is the first experimental film portrait of Barbara Hammer, who throughout her work focused the camera on women. The artist presents the intimate world of her heroine, the wife of the avant-garde director Stan Brakhage, who repeatedly “used”, as Jane puts it, her image in his work, including in the famous film “Window Water Baby Moving” (1958). Hammer sensitively looks at Jane, who is fascinated by the world of plants and is learning the language of animals. He builds a nuanced image of her, which the heroine will later describe as representing her as she was and consistent with her own experience of herself.

“I picked up Stan and Jane Brakhage at the airport and drove them to San Francisco State College where Stan spoke about his films to the student body. I was fascinated with Jane. She was so interested in the world around her while Stan seemed caught up only in his ideas. She picked seed pods from trees and plants and told me she had written a lexicon of dog language. She was so much more complex than Stan’s portrayal of her in “Window Water Baby Moving” (1958) that I decided to make a documentary about her for my graduate project.” —Barbara Hammer.

Superdyke Meets Madame X / USA, 1975, 21 min

A picture of an intimate relationship between two women – from the first kiss to the breakup. This is also Hammer’s first attempt at recording using the Sony Portapak video system, which he learns from Max Alma as part of a skills exchange. The experiment with film images overlaps with their intimate relationship, filmed in real time, and is provided with a meta-commentary on the process of filming and getting to know each other.

The film documents the Barbara Hammer’s relationship with Max Almy on a reel-to-reel ¾” videotape recorder and microphone. This was Hammer’s first foray into recording with the Sony Portapak and was produced as part of a skill swap with Almy.

Still Point / USA, 1989, 9 min

The central point of the image is at the junction of the four screens into which the frame is divided. This stationary point is located between scenes of home and homelessness, travel, changing weather, architecture, sports, reflecting the movement and rush of life at the end of the 20th century. “At the still point of the revolving world. Neither corporeal nor incorporeal. Neither from nor towards. “At a still point, there is a dance,” wrote TS Eliot in “Burnt Norton” (translated by Czesław Miłosz). In the film, Barbara Hammer searches for a calm point in life from the perspective of which everything else spins transcendentally.

“Still Point” whirls around a point of centeredness as four screens of home and homelessness, travel and weather, architecture and sports signify the constant movement and haste of late twentieth century life. “At the still point of the turning world, that’s where the dance is,” wrote TS Eliot in “Burnt Norton,” the first poem of “Four Quartets”. Hammer seeks a point of quiet from which all else transiently moves.

Lesbian Whale / USA, 2015, 7 min

A video animation featuring Barbara Hammer’s early drawings, which were taken from her notebook from 1971. The first seeds of Hammer’s later film and performance work emerge in these works, alongside self-portraits, sketches, notes about future films, and drawings of the world around her. In the soundtrack, we hear comments from artists and the director’s friends and read excerpts from Hammer’s notes and thoughts written in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is the period before and after Hammer left her husband to find her place in the California community women associated with the second wave of feminism and pursue an artistic and film career. The film stars: AK Burns, Heather Cassils, Myrel Chernick, Janlori Goldman, Holly Hughes, Daniel Alexander Jones, Reena Katz, Bradford Nordeen, Liz Rosenfeld, Julia Steinmetz.

“Lesbian Whale” is a video animation of Hammer’s early notebook drawings set to a sound track of commentary by the artist’s friends and peers. The script is composed of fragments and stray thoughts – ‘as ​​a feminist I’m very skeptical’; ‘not necessarily physical time but emotional time’ – and it’s not quite clear whether it’s spontaneous, planned, composed by the speakers, or read from Hammer’s notebooks. If Hammer’s artistic influence is well documented, this slippage between voices, authors, and images suggests an ethos of collaboration and conviviality that may prove to be her greatest legacy.” —Andrew Kachel, Artforum.

Voice Participants: AK Burns, Heather Cassils, Myrel Chernick, Janlori Goldman, Holly Hughes, Daniel Alexander Jones, Reena Katz, Bradford Nordeen, Liz Rosenfeld, Julia Steinmetz.