Melbourne Cinémathèque screens Queering the Archive: The Cinema of Barbara Hammer

67 minutes – R18+ (16mm prints)

Hammer’s first feature recontextualises material from the 1933 landmark queer film Lot in Sodom within an optically manipulated fretwork of associative montage, while also appropriating excerpts from 1930s German fiction films and footage of three couples making love. This palimpsest of representations of homosexual life found in the margins and outtakes of cinema history powerfully confronts heteronormative images of sexual and erotic love. Preceded by Endangered (Barbara Hammer, 1988, 18 mins – Unclassified 15+). A materialist reflection on the threatened tradition of experimental filmmaking.

45 minutes – Unclassified 15+ (16mm prints)

This collection of three short works made by Hammer in the mid-1970s centres on the form and experiences of the female body, notably addressing topics like queer sexuality and material identity. Drawing on an avant-garde film process, Hammer gives expression to a lesbian aesthetic and defines not just her own career, but a movement. These works, including Superdyke (1975) and Women I Love (1976), explore hidden lesbian histories, the politics of being gay and the experience of being a woman.

66 minutes – Unclassified 15+ (16mm prints)

Hammer’s final instalment in the “Queer History Trilogy” (Nitrate Kisses was the first) surveys and disputes the negative historical depiction of lesbians by the medical, educational, religious and legal establishments, alongside pornography and the media. The juxtaposition of archival documentary footage with early lesbian cinema and cabaret songs provides an audacious reaffirmation of queer subversion and appropriation.

55 minutes – Unclassified 15+ (16mm prints)

This program of two of Hammer’s most celebrated and searching films of the 1980s includes: Audience (1982), a diary of audience reactions to retrospectives of Hammer’s work in San Francisco, London, Toronto and Montreal; and Bent Time (1983), a work inspired by the scientific theory that time can bend like light curving at the universe’s outer edges. Hammer uses an extreme wide-angle lens and “one frame of film per foot of physical space” to capture high-energy, mystical and scientific sites across the United States.

105 minutes – R18+

Hammer’s fascinating collage of archival photographs, home movies and interviews explores the lesbian histories of women artists across the 20th century: American photographer Alice Austen, German Dada collagist Hannah Höch, and contemporary painter Nicole Eisenman. A careful examination of the museum as “closet”, and a thoughtful lesson on the importance of creating and archiving feminist artwork. Followed by Maya Deren’s Sink (2011) and A Horse is Not a Metaphor (2008), two late Hammer films that reflect on and revise concepts around death and cultural history and were both recipients of the Teddy Award for best short LGBTQI+ film at the Berlinale.