Barbara Hammer, “Contribution to Light” (1968), 3:42 min, color, silent, Super 8mm film on HD video

Barbara Hammer’s Contribution to Light screens at MoMA on May 15th and 17th. Visit this link for more information. A description of the program follows:

Rosa Barba probes the physical and conceptual conditions that frame our experience with cinema, often by reconfiguring film instruments to create new uses of cinematic light. This concern for natural and technological illumination shines through with a presentation of Barbara Hammer’s Contribution to Light, which dazzles with syncretic bursts of refracted light created through found materials including broken shards of glass and a crystal ashtray. While Barba’s interest in experimental approaches to the travelogue is expressed through a presentation of Ingrid Wiener’s Northwest Passage as well as Vivienne Dick’s Super 8mm film Visibility Moderate, which follows an American tourist’s return to her homeland of Ireland, juxtaposed against interviews from sectarian prisoners and footage of political marches.

Northwest Passage. 1988. Austria. Directed by Ingrid Wiener. Video (color, sound). 12 min.
Visibility Moderate. 1981. Ireland. Directed by Vivienne Dick. Video (color, sound). 29 min.
Contribution to Light. 1968. USA. Directed by Barbara Hammer. Super 8mm film transferred to high-definition video (color, silent). 4 min.

Program approx. 55 min.