Barbara Hammer Through Her Own Lens
The documentary Barbara Forever (2026), directed by Brydie O’Connor, portrays feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer largely through Hammer’s own archival recordings and materials rather than conventional biographical narration. The film largely skips Hammer’s first three decades, reflecting Hammer’s own view that her life began when she came out as a lesbian and started making films in the early 1970s, after leaving her husband and joining Berkeley’s queer and experimental film scenes. Constructed mostly from photographs, notes, videos, and voice recordings Hammer preserved, the documentary includes some new interviews with her longtime partner, Florrie Burke, while weaving in audio reflections Hammer recorded during her final years with endometrioid ovarian cancer. It also situates her 2018 performance The Art of Dying or (Palliative Art Making in the Age of Anxiety) in the context of her illness, created one year before her death.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Censorship, Looted Treasures, and Artists Under Watch