The Risky Visions of Barbara Hammer

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Tender fictions (Barbara Hammer, 1995)The Risky Visions of Barbara Hammer
12 June - 01 July 2012
Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde, 75008 Paris

Since the early 1970s, Barbara Hammer has claimed the double identity of feminist and lesbian activist. Pioneer of queer cinema, she has gained an international reputation in the field of American experimental cinema.

From her earliest films (X, Dyketactics, Superdyke), her boldness is evident in the enthusiastic and lyrical exploration of sexuality and women’s pleasure, previously terra incognita in the geography of cinema. For this, it invents new formal representations of flower and plant outbursts (Women I Love) to a symbolic vocabulary close to Surrealism, revealing its proximity with Maya Deren, and Claude Cahun (I Was / Am I, Psychosynthesis) and two recent works (Maya Deren’s Sink and Lover Other: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore).

The creative energy of Barbara Hammer fires up all of the rich technical syntax of the avantgarde: superimposed layering of images, visual collage, coloring or alteration of the film, de-framing, use of solarized and negative film, and editing in post production to transform the movie into poetic form by manipulating the film before our eyes (Endangered). All these effects contribute to the technical deployment of a work rich in radiant colors and sounds more and more skillfully worked (Generations). Even in her many films shot in black and white, Barbara Hammer is a filmmaker of light and perceptual experiments. She is also highly attentive to the accompanying sound of her films: music and sound effects that give a color, a tone, sometimes lyrical and sometimes humorous, to films that accompany the memory they hold.

From the first shooting in super 8mm, she films alone or with her friends, making public the most private chapters of her life. Parallel to the personal films are works of memory archives and hidden lesbian and gay histories, forming a trilogy: Nitrate Kisses (1992), Tender Fictions (1995) and History Lessons (2000).
Her work evolves over time: in 2000, she filmed Devotion in Japan about a kind of “community” of filmmakers centered around a charismatic producer, and Resisting Paradise in 2003, which questions “how to be an artist in during war?” In 2007, she made a documentary about women divers from the Korean island of Jeju-Do, South Korea. In 2011, her latest film is a tribute to the filmmaker Maya Deren which she made after finishing in 2008, a painful movie A Horse Is Not A Metaphor where her fight against cancer is assisted by her of love of energy and life both intimately connected to the beauty of nature.

Screening schedule

Tuesday June 12, 7pm
Opening night, in presence of the filmmaker and Danièle Hibon.
Réservation required: [email protected]
- Two bad Daughters (directed with Paula Levine), 12’
- Sanctus, 19’
- Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren, 15’
- Maya Deren’s Sink, 29’

Wednesday, June 13, 7pm
In presence of the filmmaker.
- I Was /I Am, US, 6’
- X, US, 1973, 16 mm, b&w, 8’
- Psychosynthesis, US, 16 mm, 1975, color, 8’
- History Lessons, US, 2000, 16 mm, color, 66’

Friday, June 15 juin, 7pm
In presence of the filmmaker.
- Tender Fictions, 58’
- A Horse Is Not A Metaphor, 30’

Saturday, June 16, 4pm
Special session: "Voyages from Lesbos", meeting with Barbara Hammer and Elisabeth Lebovici, art critic and art historian.
- Superdyke, 25’
- Women I Love, 25’
- Nitrate Kisses, 77’

Sunday, June 17, 4pm
In presence of the filmmaker.
- Lover Other, 55’, subtitled in French
- Resisting Paradise, 80’, subtitled in French

Sunday, June 17, 7pm
Performance of Barbara Hammer in collaboration with Rosa Barba.
Réservation required: [email protected]
A performatic dialogue between two artists of different contexts who use film as an experimental tool to create radical new art languages.

Tuesday, June 19, 7pm
- Generations, 30’ (directed with Gina Carducci)
- The Female Closet, 58’

Saturday, June 23, 5pm
"Terre et Eau".
- Pools, 9’ (directed with Barbara Klutinis)
- Pond and Waterfall, 15’
- Stone Circles, 12’
- Bent Time, 22’
- Diving Women of Jeju-Do, 25’

Sunday, June 24, 5pm
"Lumière fragile".
- Machu Picchu, 16’
- Tourists, 4’
- Parisian Blinds, 8’
- Doll House, 4’
- Place Mattes, 9’
- No No Nooky T.V., 12’
- Endangered, 19’
- Sanctus, 19’

Tuesday, June 26, 7pm
- I Was/I Am, 6’
- My Babushka: Searching Ukrainian Indentities, 53’

Saturday, June 30, 5pm
- Devotion, A Film about Ogawa Productions, 84’

Sunday, July 1, 5pm
- Resisting Paradise, 80’, subtitled in French

Partners
Produced with the assistance of Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Center.

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