Made in SF: Films by Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer is an experimental filmmaker best known for her groundbreaking works in queer cinema. She first studied film at San Francisco State University in the late 1960s, at around the same time that she came out as a lesbian — an act that motivated and informed her approach to the medium during the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. Hammer has directed more than 80 films — from her 1970s works that engage taboo subjects through performance, to her 1980s experiments with perception, to her 1990s documentaries on queer history. Tonight we present two films made by Hammer in San Francisco, chosen by Hammer herself. Nitrate Kisses, her first feature, weaves striking images of the sexual activities of four gay and lesbian couples with footage that unearths the forbidden and invisible history of a marginalized people. Dyketactics is hailed as the first lesbian lovemaking film to be made by a lesbian filmmaker — a sensual, evocative montage of 110 images selected for their representation of the sense of touch. In the words of the filmmaker, “I wanted to make a lesbian commercial.”