UnionDocs

An excerpt from Hammer’s forthcoming book HAMMER! Making Movies out of Sex and Life will be available for free to every attendee, courtesy of Doctruck.

A Horse Is Not a Metaphor USA, 2009, 58 minutes, DVD

Freedom is movement, freedom is ease; freedom is a horse galloping with mane and tail flying in the wind. Freedom is my eye and mind following the flow of expression through movement. Freedom is riding my horse on a trail exploring the unknown or seeing with the eyes that rebirth from cancer has given me, as the world becomes new again. I am completing a film that shows the power of living in the present to the fullest and with the greatest freedom.

Experimental film can best convey the emotional ups and downs of a cancer patient. The multi-layers of feelings, experiences, visions and tears can be portrayed through juxtapositions, editing rhythms, image super impositions, and a personal point of view which are some of the hallmarks of experimental film. A traditional documentary approach would dampen the emotional impact and could not convey both the trials and the thrills of hopes that I’ve experienced.

Winner of Best Short in 2009 Berlin International Film Festival

Vital Signs USA, 1991, 10 minutes, DVD

This film is dedicated to John Wilbert Hammer, Curt McDowell and Vito Russo.

The film employs images and text to intertwine Western constructions of death with Hammer’s personal interactions with a skeleton, clips from Renais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour, text from Foucault’s Birth of a Clinic and scenes from a hospital intensive care unit.

Grand Prize Winner of the Black Mariah Film and Video Festival 1991/1992.

A Horse is not a Metaphor

Barbara Hammer was born on May 15, 1939 in Hollywood, California. She
is a visual artist working primarily in film and video and has made
over 80 works in a career that spans 40 years. She is considered a
pioneer of queer cinema.

Barbara’s experimental films of the 1970’s often dealt with taboo subjects such as menstruation, female orgasm and lesbian sexuality. In the 80’s she used optical printing to explore perception and the fragility of 16mm film life itself. Her documentaries tell the stories of marginalized peoples who have been hidden from history and are often essay films that are multi-leveled and engage audiences viscerally and intellectually with the goal of activating them to make social change. Hammer was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Fall 2005 at the Bratislava Academy of Art and Design, Slovakia; she received the first Shirley Clarke Avant-Garde Filmmaker Award in October 2006 and the Women In Film Award 2006 from the St. Louis International Film Festival. In February 2007, she was awarded a tribute and retrospective at the Chinese Cultural University Digital Imaging Center in Taipei, Taiwan. She lives and works in New York City.

This event is co-presented by The Flaherty Seminar, The Feminist Press, and Doctruck.

The Flaherty Seminar is is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the proposition that independent media can illuminate the human spirit. Its mission is to foster exploration, dialogue, and introspection about the art and craft of all forms of the moving image.

The Feminist Press is an independent nonprofit literary publisher that promotes freedom of expression and social justice. About to enter its fortieth year, the Press publishes exciting writing by women and men who share an activist spirit and a belief in choice and equality.

Doctruck is a a new, occasional, experimental, traveling documentary series.