To Barbara Hammer superfans, Barbara Forever may seem lacking. Where are the jump cuts, the weird overlays, the extended shots of a woman masturbating, superimposed over rock formations?
Brydie O’Connor’s documentary about the experimental filmmaker’s life is more aimed at someone with an extremely finite attention span for experimental film, even the queer kind. Composed mostly of footage from Hammer’s extensive archives, Barbara Forever is a delight that synthesizes the joy of throwing oneself into strange and improbable art projects with a helluva lot of dyke drama.
As Hammer herself put it: “I was prolific in work and in sex.”
Hammer’s first foray into queer film came In 1972, as a thirtysomething year-old film student at San Francisco State. In need of footage, Hammer hustled up a group of women to go out to some “witches’ land” in Napa County, where she shot an hour’s worth of footage of them romping naked through the grass, fondling each other, and—as one does while naked on witches’ land—focusing in on their own pubes through the viewfinder of a SLR camera.
In the campus edit room, Hammer cut up the footage and began to layer it into a kaleidoscope of boobs, butts, nipples, and grass. Fantastic: but something was missing. That something, she decided, was lesbian sex, which she had recently discovered and decided was pretty much the best thing ever. Another film student agreed to film her having sex with a girlfriend. Problem solved. Hammer edited that in, scored the whole thing to two folksongs (“Any Woman Can Be A Lesbian!” and “Loving a Woman” by Alix Dobkin), and called it a day.
Later, Hammer found out that you had to get someone’s permission to use their music in a film. She found Dobkin and asked if she was cool with her song being used in a very artistic lesbian sex film.
Can you promise me that no men will ever see it? Dobkin asked.
It was a school project, so Hammer had already shown it to her teacher (a guy) and the other students (also guys).
The only logical next step was to go to Mills College in Oakland, talk her way into being left alone in a room with a Moog synthesizer, and turn a bunch of dials until she arrived at something like a score. And that’s what she did. It didn’t sound good—the resulting short film, Dyketactics, looks and sounds like the one of the studentiest film that ever studented. It was messy and deeply weird, but hard to forget.
Hammer is clearly visible at the center of part of the footage, extremely nude and bouncing up and down like a gymnast about to launch into a floor routine.
Has anyone ever enjoyed having a body more than Barbara Hammer? Or thrown themselves so fully into using a camera as a dissociative tool, as a way to be hyper-attuned to, but also outside of, the weird mess that is being alive?
Even as it is a more approachable survey of Hammer’s work, Barbara Forever steers clear of the standard beats of the narrative biopic in ways that feel like an unexpected get-out-of-jail-free card. The classic barrage of talking heads that typically launch a documentary biopic, by explaining the subject’s importance, never arrive. Though, it also feels worth noting that Kristen Stewart has said elsewhere she’s a huge fan of Multiple Orgasm—the fingering/geology movie we mentioned at the beginning.
As so many tattoos say: “Art is long, life is short.” What feels like an absolute luxury, though, is watching a film where a woman gets to make art, be horny, age, and make mistakes on her own terms. Barbara Forever an instant classic to be watched with all your current and future ex-girlfriends.
Barbara Forever screens as part of Portland Panorama Film Festival at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st , Fri April 10, 7 pm, $15, tickets at portlandpanorama.org, 102 minutes, not rated.
