Arthouse50: A Barbara Hammer Tribute

Introduced by Tanya Zimbardo, San Francisco-based curator This program highlights a selection of experimental shorts by queer film legend Barbara Hammer (1939–2019), whose work The Roxie Theater has championed for decades. Shot at The Roxie, the beginning of Audience (1982) features Hammer’s impromptu and often flirtatious questions posed to audience members gathered in line before her first tribute screening as part of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Hammer foregrounded her relationship to the women’s movement and the lesbian community. Sisters! (1973) brings together rare footage of the first Women’s International Day march in San Francisco and the second National Lesbian Conference at UCLA. The spirit of revolution continues in the playful Superdyke (1975) in which Hammer and an army of women take over San Francisco. Sync Touch (1981) puts forward the connection between touch and sight as the basis for what Hammer considered to be a new lesbian aesthetic in cinema. (Lex Sloan/Tanya Zimbardo) Sisters! (1973, 8:25 min, b&w and color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video) Combining perhaps the only footage from the first Women’s International Day march in San Francisco and rare footage of the second National Lesbian Conference at UCLA, Sisters! is a joyous and vital landmark in feminist, queer, and lesbian filmmaking. Its end credit, scratched into the emulsion of the film, attributes Sisters! to “Agressa,” the pseudonym under which Barbara Hammer made some of her earliest films. “It’s about women taking over the world: women driving trucks, changing Volkswagen engines, and leading the police in new revolutions! It also has footage of women topless, dancing, sweating – with babies on their shoulders! – to the music of the Family of Woman band at the second National Lesbian Conference that took place at UCLA, where Audre Lorde and Kate Millett spoke.” — Barbara Hammer Preserved by BB Optics and the Academy Film Archive. Preservation of this film was made possible by a grant from The Women’s Film Preservation Fund. Superdyke (1975, 17:34 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on video) “Superdyke is a gem from early liberation days. Influenced by feminism and lesbian militancy, Hammer’s films are politically pointed, bearing witness to lesbian empowerment and visibility, and formally sophisticated, fully cognizant of experimental film history. Superdyke gives the superhero a witty dyke inflection. It runs from mellow nature-loving to savvy urban pop, showing the thematic range of its author and the multiplicity of lesbian experience.” — Juan Antonio Suarez Sync Touch (1981, 10:07 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on video) “A lesbian/feminist aesthetic proposing the connection between touch and sight to be the basis for a ‘new cinema.’ The film explores the tactile child nature within the adult woman filmmaker, the connection between sexuality and filmmaking, and the scientific analysis of the sense of touch.” — Barbara Hammer Audience (1982, 32:35 min, b&w, sound, 16 mm film on HD video) Barbara Hammer takes her camera out to film the audiences at screenings of her films – some women only, some mixed – at the London Film-makers’ Co-op; at the Roxie Theater, in San Francisco, during Gay Pride Week (where the audience includes fellow filmmakers Curt McDowell and Ulrike Ottinger); at The Funnel, in Toronto; and at McGill University, in Montreal. “I wanted everyone to speak for herself. I wanted to show the diversity in a women’s audience, the sophistication, the thoughtfulness, the fun-loving spirit, the flirtations, the detailed, the subtle. I wanted my audience to make their own film. In a time of national borders and increasing geographic chauvinism, I found images of women transcending boundaries and cultures and at the same time acting as spokespeople for cultural difference.” — Barbara Hammer This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. Courtesy of the Estate of Barbara Hammer, New York and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. Note films start right at the listed showtime. Free or discounted for members. All ticket sales are final.