Date: 30 March 2004 | Season: LUX Salon | Tags: London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
LUX SALON: BARBARA HAMMER
Tuesday 30 March 2004, at 7:30pm
London LUX
Barbara Hammer, is an internationally recognised film artist who has made over eighty films and videos, and is considered a pioneer of lesbian-feminist experimental cinema.
Barbara Hammer, Dyketactics, 1974, colour, sound, 4 min
Barbara Hammer, Multiple Orgasm, 1977, colour, sound, 6 min
Barbara Hammer, Double Strength, 1978, colour, sound, 16 min
Barbara Hammer, Our Trip, 1980, colour, sound, 4 min
Barbara Hammer, Sync Touch, 1981, colour, sound, 10 min
Barbara Hammer, No No Nooky T.V., 1987, b/w & colour, sound, 12 min
“To discover and uncover the invisible images and material in photography, film and video has been my pursuit for over twenty-five years as a pioneer lesbian artist. I have made over seventy-seven film and videos since 1972. All my work is about revealing, showing, expressing, uncovering that which has not been seen before. I try to give voice and image to those who have been denied personal expression. I continue to be involved in formal structure determined by the content of the material. Over the years my films and videos have evolved to dense referential montages characterised by a challenging montage/collage of image and audio. I seek to empower the viewing audience to “make their own film” by working in a non-linear, metaphoric and fragmented manner. It is a political act to work and speak as a lesbian artist in the dominant art world and to speak as an avant-garde artist to a lesbian and gay audience. My presence and voice address both issues of homophobia as well as the need for an emerging community to explore a new imagination.” (Barbara Hammer)
PROGRAMME NOTES
LUX SALON: BARBARA HAMMER
Tuesday 30 March 2004, at 7:30pm
London LUX
DYKETACTICS
Barbara Hammer, 1974, colour, sound, 4 min
The first lesbian lovemaking film to be made by a lesbian filmmaker. Sensual, evocative montage of 110 images selected for their representation of ‘touching’. In the words of the filmmaker, “I wanted to make a lesbian commercial.”
“The images are varied and very quickly presented in the early part of the film, introducing the characters, if you will. The second half of the film slows down measurably and all of a sudden I found myself holding my breath as I watched the images of love-making sensually and artistically captured.” (Elizabeth Lay, Plexus)
MULTIPLE ORGASM
Barbara Hammer, 1977, colour, sound, 6 min
A sensual, explicit film that says just what it is, plus visual overlays of erotic rock and cave formations.
DOUBLE STRENGTH
Barbara Hammer, 1978, colour, sound, 16 min
“One of Barbara’s most beautiful films on personal relationships made with trapeze artist Terry Sendgraff, shot swinging in the nude from various angles. The image poetry carries us through the duration of a relationship: its intensely erotic beginnings, its sense of serenity, its playfulness and comedy, and its closure, the alienation, pain, anger, and loss of contact. The death of the body, a theme tenderly interwoven into the ageless strength and agility of Terry Sendgraff’s body, becomes the death of a relationship, a closing out, a blanking out, a leaving of the body behind. The body becomes a source of life. Its movement, grace, pain, and happiness are contrasted with the inertness of things and the stillness of photos that merely document the brief passage of light.” (Jacqueline Zita, Jumpcut)
OUR TRIP
Barbara Hammer, 1980, colour, sound, 4 min
“Feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer has celebrated her recent trip to Peru with her friend Corky Wick through a diaristic animation of photographs they took during their travels. Landscapes and portraits are given growing patterns of framing and texture with magic markers and tempera paint, expressing the richly evocative folk art of the Incan people they saw as we hear their native music resonate on the soundtrack.” (Anthony Reveaux)
SYNC TOUCH
Barbara Hammer, 1981, colour, sound, 10 min
“At the opening we are listening to an ‘expert’ speaking – someone who knows about touch and erogenous zones, about the erotic – yet the emphasis is on her ‘knowing’ and what she knows ‘about’ rather than on her ‘experiencing.’ Hammer undercuts the monologue with intense and extraordinary close-ups of areas of the woman’s face and neck, her teeth and lips, her ears. The viewer becomes so absorbed in the details of this closeness, the closeness of a lover seeing the face of her friend, that the words become lost in feeling and experiencing the closeness itself. The other way this works is to make the viewer want to touch, to become involved for, as the speaker says, touch precedes sight in the new-born child, and sight becomes a connection between the actual touch and understanding what it means.” (Cath Dunsford, Alternative Cinema)
NO NO NOOKY T.V.
Barbara Hammer, 1987, b/w & colour, sound, 12 min
Using a 16mm Bolex and Amiga computer, Hammer creates a witty and stunning film about how women view their sexuality versus the way male images of women and sex are perceived. The impact of technology on sexuality and emotion and the sensual self is explored through computer language juxtaposed with everyday colloquial language of sex. No No Nooky T.V. confronts the feminist controversy around sexuality with electronic language, pixels and interface. Even the monitor is eroticised in this film/video hybrid that points fun at romance, sexuality, and love in our post-industrial age.
Presented in association with the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, with thanks to Selina Robertson.
Back to top
