My MIFF BFF Ariel said I had to see this film as Barbara Hammer is the most important lesbian filmmaker ever. I’m glad I did.

Being a successful and prolific artist I think seems to require a strong drive to tell stories of one’s world and a strong self image. Barbara Hammer talks about her life beginning when she realised she was a lesbian at the age of 30. Already interested in filmmaking, it made sense to her to turn her lens towards a group of people (and herself) who were not at the time well represented.

Being an experimental film maker, this meant crossing some boundaries of what was expected, including naked bodies, depicting touch and lesbian sex. It created quite a sensation but came at a time when this was seen as transgressive rather than progressive.

The documentary is pulled together in a way that seems to sit well with Hammer’s principles about life – we see the screen split with different images and we move back-and-forth through time. The final scenes with Hammer’s last film are particularly poignant.

For a while Hammer didn’t feel particularly likable and I think this is because she was unafraid to turn the camera on herself and be open about who she was and what she wanted. We see her string of relationships where the partner seems to be fodder for a film. This seems to shift when she finds the love of her life, Florrie Burke, who is the constant through much of her career and is the holder of her archive.

Hammer seems to have been an important person in the advent of new queer cinema. Although her name is not known as well as her contemporaries Todd Haynes or Gregg Araki, it is good to see she has not been forgotten.