Out Magazine reports that lesbian film maker legend Barbara Hammer is celebrated in a new release. If you cannot find your history, you must create it. This was the driving principle behind the revolutionary work of filmmaker Barbara Hammer, the subject of the poignant new documentary Barbara Forever. Directed by Brydie O’Connor, the film serves as both a vital archive of lesbian history and a profound love letter to the artist, who died in 2019. It is a work that deserves a place in film, gender studies, and queer studies curricula.
In the documentary, Hammer recounts that she did not hear the word "lesbian" until she was 30 years old, and even then did not understand its meaning. Upon embracing the identity, she had a stark realisation: she had never seen lesbian sensuality or sexuality depicted on screen. She resolved to be the one to put it there.
Once she began, she never stopped. Over her lifetime, Hammer produced more than 80 avant-garde films, becoming a central figure in the New Queer Cinema movement alongside directors like Gregg Araki, Todd Haynes, and Cheryl Dunye. Barbara Forever traces her groundbreaking career from the 1970s through to the 2000s and 2010s, when she turned her camera on her own ageing body and her experience with cancer.
At its heart, the film is a celebration of lesbian love. Interviews with Hammer’s long-term partner, Florrie R. Burke, overflow with adoration and admiration for the late trailblazer, offering a beautiful and resonant portrait of enduring queer partnership.
Composed largely of Hammer’s own archival footage and film clips, Barbara Forever embodies the physical, tactile sensuality she described as innate to "lesbian cinema." This approach makes the history it presents feel vividly real and immediate.
The documentary also engages thoughtfully with contemporary queer discourse. It highlights Hammer’s friendship and collaboration with a much younger queer filmmaker, Joey Carducci. When they met, Carducci identified as a lesbian. In clips from Carducci’s A Video Letter to Barbara Hammer, he explains his initial fear about coming out to her as trans masculine, worried she might see it as anti-lesbian or anti-butch. Carducci articulates a desire to explore transmasculinity not in opposition to lesbianism, but in community and solidarity with it.
This nuanced perspective provides an empathetic answer to modern debates, reminding viewers that the lesbian community has always been intersectional. The film underscores a legacy of solidarity with trans men, not opposition.
In an era where governments seek to erase queer history from schools and public records, the work of creating our own archives, as Barbara Hammer did, is more crucial than ever. Barbara Forever does more than secure her legacy; it forever enshrines a vibrant and essential record of lesbian art and life.
