Dyketactics: tactile cinema by way of lesbian expression and complete reclamation of the body in the face of a longstanding history of male gaze upon women's bodies and the fetishization of queer women's sexuality. Notice how Hammer subverts the idea of nudity in imagery throughout art in her insistence to show the vagina in extreme close up instead of the more male associated fixation on breasts. As Hammer would recall in this interview with BOMB magazine, at one screening for Dyketactics in the 70s a man screamed at the close of the movie upon being shown a vagina to which the women in the audience replied "Haven't you seen one before?". One can infer that he had not been this…

I watched a collection of Barbara Hammer films, including "Menses" and "Double Strength," and a few others not in Letterboxd, I think. There's a certain harmony to them that made them all seem to fit together, despite being distinct. This isn't quite the same as, say, all the Ramones songs being very similar, though there's a bit of that. Part of it is, of course, that I acquired it in a format that was unitary, and thus, I entered with the assumption that it would be one piece. The many parts within, however, fit together thematically (obviously) in a way that made sense. One of the first is "Menses," and later, films depict in a direct way affects of aging.…

52 films by women 2018: 11/52.

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. Existing at the exact mid-point between Annie Sprinkle and the Boards of Canada, Barbara Hammer's most famous short takes the idea of a movie sex scene and expands it into a kind of pastoral-erotic utopia, a dream of a world without prejudice, shame or even possessiveness. Like all great films about sex, it still works even if you don't actually find it sexy*, as it seems more interested in building a sense of community and supportiveness than actually turning you on. But if it does that as well that's a bonus.

As with Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets and The…

This film is a perfect example of a film that is outside of my own personal realm of experience, like entirely (I am not a gay woman, I am not a woman, and I'm not a heterosexual man), yet still is enjoyable to watch because the joy in herein is demonstrated thru the unfamiliar. When people talk about how they just want something that they can personally "find themselves in" on screen I scoff to varying degrees (heterosexual white men get the largest scoffing, extreme alterity gets no scoffing but an extended thought process from the politics of representation and how I can understand the desire for recognition but my own thoughts on media still inherently reject that? it's much…

Um grande achado do cinema lésbico.

Os anos 70 e a década de liberdade sexual, a representação do nu feminino sem ser sexualizado, o prazer de se estar pelado, descobrir o próprio corpo e o corpo da outra pessoa, seja dividindo apenas o mesmo espaço ou apontando uma câmera, como também o sexo. E aqui o sexo não é nem um pouco sexualizado, são dois corpos brincando e se descobrindo, a câmera vaga e passeia por esses encontros.

''To me, pleasure is in surprising, playing with someone else in a way you’re not expecting or allowing them in to play with you. A sense of “anything can go,” and we can go from traditional behaviors to joking, bringing ideas together,…