Directed by: Brydie O’Connor
Distributed by: The Film Collaborative
Written by Eric Zhu
51/100
Many cinema-goers, even serious cinephiles, have little context for avant-garde cinema. It’s easy to understand the impetus behind a documentary like “Barbara Forever,” which provides a rare introduction to a towering figure in the field.
The lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer is profiled here in her own words, through retrospective voice-over narration from Hammer herself accompanied by a mix of archival footage and material from her films. “Barbara Forever” is largely hagiographic, informing us of Hammer’s introductions to second-wave feminism and lesbianism, her difficulty integrating into the male-dominated avant-garde in the 80s, the breakthrough of “Nitrate Kisses,” all the way to her fight against ovarian cancer and her influence on the next generation of queer filmmakers.
While I personally hoped for a more formally-daring portrait of a formally-daring artist, it’s a pleasure to spend time with Hammer and her images. Perhaps one could argue that O’Connor is repurposing “Nitrate Kisses’” similar voice-over montage format, and one of the film’s segments near the end about a next generation harnessing Hammer’s images would support this, but the film also needs more frisson in its sound/image relations. Nevertheless, it’s wonderful to see Hammer’s private archives, which include footage of her convincing her friends to star in her films, a sweet elementary school film screening, and moving images of her aging body. The fluidity with which O’Connor stitches together Hammer’s archives and her films is the documentary’s greatest strength.
You can follow more of Eric’s thoughts on film on Letterboxd, X, and The Insert