Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer was born in Hollywood, California, in 1939. She came out as a lesbian in her thirties, left her marriage and began building a filmmaking practice around experiences rarely represented on screen.

“Dyketactics” (1974) brought lesbian sexuality into experimental film through touch, movement and rapidly changing images. Over the following decades Hammer made more than 80 films and videos, combining formal experimentation with documentary, personal experience and historical research.

In “Nitrate Kisses” (1992), she searched for queer lives excluded from conventional histories. “History Lessons” (2000) reworked archive material to expose and disrupt the ways lesbians had been represented. Her interest in the body also extended to the physical properties of film itself: damaged or altered images could become part of the work’s meaning.

After being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Hammer explored illness and resilience in “A Horse Is Not a Metaphor” (2008). She later spoke publicly about dying with dignity and supported younger lesbian filmmakers through a grant established in her name. Hammer died in New York in 2019, leaving a body of work that made lesbian experience a source of cinematic invention.