Barbara Forever

synopsis

Barbara Hammer (1939–2019), an icon of the lesbian art community in the US and the maker of nearly a hundred films, left an indelible mark on the lives of countless feminists and female artists. This empathetic and entertaining documentary exploration, which energetically blends personal archives with excerpts from the filmmaker’s own works, portrays the trials and maturation of this uncompromising filmmaker. As a woman, a feminist and an artist, she underwent a threefold emancipation from her role as a middle-class wife with a clearly mapped-out career and destiny in the 1970s. The director explores Barbara Hammer’s life alongside her life partner, Florrie R. Burke, drawing on Hammer’s distinctive commentary and artistic style.

“Lesbian film is not going to follow a traditional story. It is going to mix up life, opening space to queerness, to see there is being, that is not following the rules.” 

biography

Brydie O’Connor is an American documentary filmmaker originally from Kansas and currently living in New York. She studied American Studies and History; she wrote her final thesis on Barbara Hammer and dedicated her short film Love, Barbara (2022) to her. Her feature-length debut, Barbara Forever, was screened alongside a restored version of the film Nitrate Kisses (1992).

film details

director:	Brydie O'Connor
producer:	Elijah Stevens, Brydie O’Connor, Claire Edelman
editing:	Matt Hixon
music:	Taul Katz