Pottenkijkers: Barbara Hammer – A Body Full of Work
Pottenkijkers: Barbara Hammer – A Body Full of Work
Lesbian film collective Pottenkijkers presents an evening celebrating the life and work of Barbara Hammer. In the 1970s, Hammer was one of the first openly lesbian American directors to make avant-garde films about lesbian desire and sexuality.
With her work, Barbara Hammer laid the basis for a lesbian aesthetic in film, while also challenging the dominant norms and taboos. Right up until her death, Hammer fought for bodily autonomy – not only in relation to sexuality, but also sickness and death.
Hammer broke through in 1974 with the short film Dyketactics, depicting sex from a lesbian point of view – a ground-breaking feat at the time. With her first feature film Nitrate Kisses (1992), Hammer revealed the invisible, eradicated history of queer people using archival material and intimate scenes shot on film. In the essay film A Horse is not a Metaphor (2008), Hammer investigates her relationship to her own illness.
Lesbian film collective Pottenkijkers has invited curator, author and death doula Staci Bu Shea to this evening celebrating the life and work of Barbara Hammer. In 2017, Bu Shea co-curated the exhibition Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies in the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York).
About Pottenkijkers
Pottenkijkers regularly shows lesbian films in the broadest sense, allowing you to watch the most obscure queer films, radical documentaries and loved-up rom-coms with your les(bi) friends and everyone who loves them.
Programme
Dyketactics (1974)
A lesbian ‘advertising film’ made up of 110 images of sensual touches assembled to form a ‘kinesthetic’ montage: women touching one another, brushing one another’s hair, stroking one another in the water, bathing, eating and loving.
Nitrate Kisses (1992)
In a swirling collage, Barbara Hammer blends archival images with new recordings of (at times explicit) lovemaking scenes and oral testimony in which lesbians and queers sketch how they have had to negotiate their way through society since the 1930s. Archival footage tells underrepresented or suppressed stories, such as that of American writer Willa Cather and the very first American queer film Lot in Sodom (1933, James Sibley Watson, Melville Webber). We also learn about lesbian women in Nazi Germany – they were expected to keep quiet, also after the war.
A Horse Is Not a Metaphor (2009)
Hopeful, layered, personal documentary featuring the music of Meredith Monk. This film opens up an experimental perspective on undergoing chemotherapy and thriving whilst living with cancer. Barbara Hammer returns to a childhood dream about horses, bringing this dream to life. She finds hope, reflection and emotional recuperation by returning to nature. On the occasion of the film’s world première on Frameline31, Hammer said: “[the film] is about the power of living in the present to the fullest and with the greatest freedom.”
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Production year
2026
Length
121 min.
Event language
English
Country
NL
Part of
Queer Power
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