Now available: Barbara Hammer restorations
Posted November 20th, 2018 in New Acquisitions, New Films, News / Events
Thirteen restored prints of Barbara Hammer’s films are now in circulation, courtesy of the Academy Film Archive, Electronic Arts Intermix, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and the Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
History Lessons (2000 | 66 minutes | COLOR/B&W | SOUND)
Available from Canyon for the first time!
In this wonderfully irreverent yet empowering film, Barbara Hammer traces lesbian history by presenting an extraordinary array of archival footage – and then playfully manipulates it to make it seem as though lesbians were everywhere. From popular films to newsreels, sex ed pics, stag reels, medical and educational films, old nudies and more, History Lessons reclaims and rewrites lesbian history.
“Bold…inventive…audacious!” – Time Out New York
“Witty, giddy, unexpected, cheeky & subversive…a shameless imaginative assertion of Gay Pride throughout the 20th Century, one that identifies, invents and/or smirkingly implies gleeful lesbian sexuality in every cultural nook and cranny.” – Variety
Still Point (1989 | 8 minutes | COLOR/B&W | SOUND)
Restored print courtesy of Academy Film Archive, February, 2018.
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 T.S. Eliot in Burnt Norton, the Four Quartets. Hammer seeks a point of quiet from which all else transiently moves.
No No Nooky TV (1987 | 12 minutes | COLOR | SOUND)
Restored print courtesy of Academy Film Archive, May, 2018.
NO NO NOOKY TV posits sexuality to be a social construct in a “sex-text” of satiric graphic representation of “dirty pictures.” Made on an Amiga Computer and shot in 16mm film, NO NO NOOKY TV confronts the feminist controversy around sexuality with electronic language, pixels and interface. Even the monitor is eroticized in this film/video hybrid that points fun at romance, sexuality, and love in our post-industrial age.
Optic Nerve (1985 | 16 minutes | COLOR/B&W | SOUND)
Restored print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive, 2018.
Sound score by Helen Thorington.
“Barbara Hammer’s OPTIC NERVE is a powerful personal reflection on family and aging. Hammer employs filmed footage which, through optical printing and editing, is layered and manipulated to create a compelling meditation on her visit to her grandmother in a nursing home. The sense of sight becomes a constantly evolving process of reseeing images retrieved from the past and fused into the eternal present of the projected image. Hammer has lent a new voice to the long tradition of personal meditation in the avant-garde of the American independent cinema.”
– John Hanhardt, Biennial Exhibition Catalogue, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1987
Audience (1982 | 33 minutes | B&W | SOUND)
This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
A film of audiences in London, England at the Filmmakers’ Co-op; San Francisco at the Roxie Theater during Gay Pride Week; Toronto, Canada at The Funnel; and Montreal, Canada at McGill University.
I wanted everyone to speak for herself. I wanted to show the diversity in a womens audience, the sophistication, the thoughtfulness, the fun-loving spirit, the flirtations, the detailed, the subtle.
I wanted my audience to make their own film.
In a time of national borders and increasing geographic chauvinism, I found images of women transcending boundaries and cultures and at the same time acting as spokespeople for cultural difference.
Multiple Orgasm (1977 | 10 minutes | B&W | SILENT)
This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
A sensual, explicit film that says just what it is plus visual overlays of erotic rock and cave formations.
Women I Love (1976 | 27 minutes | COLOR | SOUND)
This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
WOMEN I LOVE is a series of cameo portraits of the filmmaker’s friends and lovers intercut with a playful celebration of fruits and vegetables pixilated in nature. Culminating footage evokes a tantric painting of sexuality sustained.
Psychosynthesis (1975 | 8 minutes | COLOR | SOUND)
This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
The sub-personalities of me as baby, athlete, witch and artist are synthesized in this film of superimpositions, intensities, and color layers coming together through the powers of film.
Superdyke (1975 | 20 minutes | COLOR | SOUND)
This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
A comedy about a troop of shield-bearing Amazons who take over city institutions before relaxing in the country.
“X” (1974 | 8 minutes | COLOR | SOUND)
A profound and powerful experimental, personal film of one woman’s despair, rage and exhibitionism; a baroque fugue of identity chanting growing from women’s pain to a holistic, self-healing naming ritual.
I Was/I Am (1973 | 7 minutes | B&W | SOUND)
Available from Canyon for the first time!
One of the first three 16 mm films made by Barbara Hammer. The filmmaker changes from a damsel in gown and crown to a leather jacket motorcycle dyke. Symbolic references to Maya Deren underscore her inspiration for Hammer. Screened on the opening night at Hammer retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art New York in 2010.
Sisters! (1973 | 8 minutes | COLOR | SOUND)
Preserved for Barbara Hammer by BB Optics, Inc. and the Academy Film Archive with support from NYWIFT Women’s Film Preservation Fund.
A celebration and collage of lesbians, including footage of the Women’s International Day march in SF and joyous dancing from the last night of the second Lesbian Conference where Family of Woman played; as well as images of women doing all types of traditional “men’s” work.
Schizy (1968 | 4 minutes | COLOR | SILENT)
Available from Canyon for the first time!
