33 Facts About Barbara Hammer

Barbara Jean Hammer was an American feminist film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer.

Barbara Hammer is known for being one of the pioneers of the lesbian film genre, and her career spanned over 50 years.

Barbara Hammer resided in New York City and Kerhonkson, New York, and taught each summer at the European Graduate School.

Barbara Hammer was born on May 15,1939, in Los Angeles, California, to Marian and John Wilber Barbara Hammer, and grew up in Inglewood.

Barbara Hammer was raised without religion, but her grandmother was Roman Catholic.

In 1961, Barbara Hammer graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and married Clayton Henry Ward, on the condition that he take her traveling around the world.

Barbara Hammer received a master's degree in English literature in 1963.

In 1974, Barbara Hammer was married and teaching at a community college in Santa Rosa.

Barbara Hammer graduated with a master's degree in film from San Francisco State University.

Barbara Hammer received the first Shirley Clarke Avant-Garde Filmmaker Award in October 2006, the Women In Film Award from the St Louis International Film Festival in 2006, and in 2009, she received the Teddy Award for best short film for her film A Horse Is Not a Metaphor at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Barbara Hammer taught film at The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Barbara Hammer was actively involved in media making industry during this period, including learning new skills and techniques, organizing premieres of her own works, opening film workshops and lessons that are related to women filmmaking, etc.

Barbara Hammer started to explore the relationship between the self and the outside world, including light, life, nature, society, government, etc.

Barbara Hammer focused more on identity politics during this period.

Barbara Hammer explored the relationship between art and social issues in her works.

Tender Fictions : Tender Fictions is an autobiographical film that reflects Barbara Hammer's early life experiences and is a sequel to her well-known documentary film Nitrate Kisses.

My Babushka: Searching Ukrainian Identities : In My Babushka: Searching Ukrainian Identities, Barbara Hammer explores her Ukrainian Identity and focuses on the geography, culture, and history of Ukraine.

Barbara Hammer created more than 80 moving image works throughout her life, and received a great number of honors.

In 2007, Barbara Hammer was honored with an exhibition and tribute at the Chinese Cultural University Digital Imaging Center in Taipei.

In 2010, Barbara Hammer had a one-month exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Barbara Hammer had exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London and at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2012; for the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival; and at the Koch Oberhuber Woolfe in Berlin in both 2011 and 2014.

Barbara Hammer received numerous awards during the span of her career.

Barbara Hammer was chosen by the Whitney Biennial in 1985,1989, and 1993, for her films Optic Nerve, Endangered, and Nitrate Kisses, respectively.

In 2008, Barbara Hammer received The Leo Award from the Flaherty Film Seminar.

Barbara Hammer was an avant-garde filmmaker and focused a large sum of her films on feminist or lesbian topics.

Barbara Hammer's films were regarded as being controversial because they focused on taboo, feminine topics such as menstruation, the female orgasm, and lesbianism.

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

Between the two sequences, Barbara Hammer aimed to create an erotic film that used different film language than the mainstream, heterosexual erotic films of the time.

Barbara Hammer felt that making films that showed her personal experience around renaming herself as a lesbian would help start the conversation on lesbianism and get people to stop ignoring its existence.

Barbara Hammer referenced this in her works, such as her 2009 film A Horse Is Not a Metaphor, in which she expressed the ups and downs of a cancer patient.

On October 10,2018, Barbara Hammer presented "The Art of Dying," a performative lecture at the Whitney Museum of Art.

Barbara Hammer died from endometrioid ovarian cancer on March 16,2019, at the age of 79.

Barbara Hammer had been receiving palliative hospice care at the time of her death.