Women I Love

synopsis

From images of half-open slits, trembling petals, fruits that can be peeled and sucked, and leaves pressed tightly together, Barbara Hammer has composed a hymn to lesbian love. Her camera closely and tenderly explores the most unique places on the bodies of her loved ones. Like a botanist captivated by floral morphology, she finds an endless variety of shapes, structures, and colours in which physicality is transformed into a garden of sensuality.

“I always ask the audience to look for the differences in relationships in the film – differences in form and content. They’re supposed to be looking and thinking about the formal concerns: who in here was a lover, and who was a friend? I think it's apparent.” — Barbara Hammer

Source: “An Interview with Barbara Hammer.” Interview by Kate Haug. Wide Angle, Ohio University School of Film, 20.1 (1998), 64-93.

biography

Barbara Hammer (1939–2019) is considered a pioneer of American queer cinema. The author of more than forty films, she systematically challenged heteronormative views of the body, intimacy, and sex. Her first short film, Dyketactics (1974), was screened at the Ji.hlava IDFF in 2008. Hammer also worked with archives, and explored “forgotten” history, as in her film, Resisting Paradise (2003), which was screened at Ji.hlava in 2004 in the Opus Bonum section.

film details

director:

Barbara Hammer