Barbara Hammer: Radical Visibility

Born in Los Angeles, Hammer was exposed to the film industry from an early age. Her mother hoped she would become a child star like Shirley Temple, but she had other ideas. After studying psychology and travelling the world with her husband, she came out as a filmmaker and as a lesbian. 

She forged a radical and deeply personal body of work that placed lesbian experience, desire and identity at its centre, at a time when such images were largely absent from the screen. She developed a distinctly experimental language that moved between sensuality, politics and autobiography. Covering themes of sexuality, the body, the fragility of light, illness, mortality, activism, resistance and the rewriting of history, her work continually reshaped her practice while remaining committed to visibility and making cinema tactile. 

Three of her short films have won the prestigious Teddy Award at Berlinale, and institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate have exhibited her work. 

As more audiences discover Hammer through Brydie O’Connor’s documentary Barbara Forever, screening at SFF 2026, it’s the perfect opportunity to explore 19 of the more than 80 films she made across a five-decade career. The program includes her groundbreaking features Nitrate Kisses and History Lessons, alongside two short film packages showcasing both her early avant-garde works and the breadth of her experimental practice. 

Introduction and film notes by Lisa Rose, curator. 

Courtesy of the Estate of Barbara Hammer, New York and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.