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Personal Life:

“Barbara Hammer (born May 15, 1939) is an American feminist filmmaker known for being one of the pioneers[1] of lesbian film whose career has spanned over 40 years. Hammer is known for creating experimental films dealing with women's issues such as gender roles, lesbian relationships and coping with aging and family.” (already on the Wikipedia)

She currently resides in New York City and Kerhonson, New York, but lives in Saas-Fee, Switzerland each summer while teaching at The European Graduate School.

Career:

Hammer has created more than 80 moving image works throughout her life. She has received a great number of honors during this time as well.

In 2007, Hammer was honored with an exhibition and tribute in Taipei at the Chinese Cultural University Digital Imaging Center. In New York in 2010, Hammer had a one month exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. Additionally, in 2013 she was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship for her film Waking Up Together. She also had exhibitions in London at The Tate Modern in 2012, in Paris at Jeu de Paume also in 2012, in Toronto for the International Film Festival in 2013 and in Berlin at the Koch Oberhuber Woolfe in both 2011 and 2014.

In terms of awards, Hammer was given a great number during the span of her career. She was chosen by the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennials in the late 1985, 1989, and 1993 for her films Optic Nerve, Endangered and Nitrate Kisses respectively. In 2006, she won both the first ever Shirley Clarke Avant-Garde Filmmaker Award from New York Women in Film and Television as well as the Women in Film Award from the St. Louis International Film Festival.

Moreover, in 2008 she was given The Leo Award from the Flaherty Film Seminar. Her films Generations and Maya Deren’s Sink both won the Teddy Award in 2011 for Best Short Films. Her film A Horse Is Not A Metaphor won the Teddy Award for Best Short Film in 2009 it also won Second Prize at the Black Maria Film Festival. It was also selected for several film festivals: the Torino Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Punta de Vista Film Festival, the Festival de Films des Femmes Creteil, and the International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund/Koln.

In 2010, Hammer wrote a book called ''Hammer! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life''. She went on a book tour the same year to showcase it.

Filmography/techniques:

Hammer is an avant-garde filmmaker and focuses a large sum of her films on feminist or lesbian topics. Through the use of experimental cinema, Hammer has exposed her audiences to feminist theory. Her films, she says, are meant to promote “independence and freedom from social restriction.”

Her films were regarded as being so controversial because they focused on feminine topics that are typically too personal to share, such as menstruation, the orgasm from the female perspective, and lesbianism.

Hammer experimented with different film gauges in the 1980’s, especially with 16 mm film. She did this in order to show just how fragile film itself is.

Her most well-known film is probably Nitrate Kisses for being most controversial. It “explores three deviant sexualities–S/M lesbianism, mixed-race gay male lovemaking, and the passions and sexual practices of older lesbians”.

Feminist/lesbian works impact:

Through her controversial work, she is considered as a pioneer of queer cinema. Her goal through her film work is to provoke discourse on those who are marginalized, and more specifically, lesbians who are marginalized. She feels that making films that show her personal experience renaming herself as lesbian will help start the conversation on lesbianism and get people to stop ignoring its existence.