Barbara Hammer: The Middle (Director Barbara Hammer is scheduled to participate in a post-screening, live-streaming Q&A.)

This program of shorts exemplifies the linkage between Barbara Hammer’s tactical methodology of media making and the sensual intimacy of relationships. Through works like Sync Touch, No No Nooky T.V., and Sanctus we see parallels between the physical process of filmmaking and the physicality of the body. Through works like Snow Job and Audience, we see Hammer questioning mainstream consumption of media and customary dynamics around the way an audience encounters and interacts with the screen. When reflecting on her work from this time, Hammer states, “In the ’80s, I found my earlier films with themes of lesbian representation had not been recognized as fine art. I began a series of more formal work in optically printed films on themes of fragility of light, life, and film itself … In the ’90s, I returned to identity politics, but enriched by the formal concerns I mastered in the ’80s. I made essay documentaries, a genre whose subject is an idea rather than a person or event. I kept my audience active, giving them the role of historian or archeologist of my densely collaged cinema.” Contains mature content.

Short films in this program include:

• Sync Touch (1981, 16mm, 10 min)^
• Pictures 4 Barbara (1981, 16mm, 8 min)^
• Audience (1982, 16mm, 32 min)∞
• No No Nooky T.V. (1987, 16mm, 12 min)^
• Snow Job (1988, HD, 8 min)
• Sanctus (1990, 16mm, 19 min)^