Barbara documentary review
Director: Brydie O’Connor
Star rating: ★★★.5
If you are not aware of who Barbara Hammer was, you must correct that right away. This intimate new documentary, which celebrates her life and legacy, is also a great place to start. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, it is the kind of documentary I look forward to most, perhaps because I have some prior connection and knowledge of the subject. There is always that deep-seated fear whether it will do her justice. Her films, her artistry, the way she confronted the camera and used the visual medium: all of it so uniquely her alone.
The premise
Thankfully, it did not last long. The first few minutes of Barbara Forever drove that emotion away. Brydie O’Connor’s film is driven by an invigorating, live-wire energy that shoots for the stars. It is alive with the spirit of the revolutionary filmmaker who was once a woman, a component made of flesh and dreams, laughter and sorrow. It charts her journey first as a lesbian, and then as a lesbian filmmaker and artist- it is the history of her self and her body that merges with the history of the visual medium. The personal meets the political and fights for space, for fame, for every hard-earned breath of recognition.
The history of cinema is, by and large, male-dominated, written by men and for men. Where do the queers exist? How do the lesbians see themselves, their desires and pains? “Touching another woman’s body… it changed my life,” Barbara says. “It had to be shown.” And so we follow her life through a treasure-trove of archival footage spanning more than four decades- splashing across the screen like a galaxy of hallucinations and desires.
What works
Matt Hixon’s editing work is utterly mesmerising, tracing the personal and political history over the years with a painter’s eye. The distinctness of Barbara’s voice is so real that it almost feels that she knew how she wanted her life to be seen in retrospect. She knew that freedom was of utmost importance; everything else came after. The film also pieces together a sizeable amount of material from Howard’s films, and oftentimes it feels like Barbara Forever is in direct conversation with her existing filmography, almost like another film she abandoned. Perhaps Audience 2!
However, Barbara Forever sometimes comes a little too close to seeing the subject only through her lens. Because Barbara narrates her life, keeps the memorabilia, is obsessed with the details she remembers and loves, and paints the years in a vision that is only hers. The rhetoric of perspective is also to ascertain how she lived and survived, day after day, behind the labels, away from the gaze of the camera. We only get that in short stretches, as her partner faces the camera, but I yearned to see more.
Final thoughts
Barbara Forever is a documentary that ultimately celebrates not Barbara but her incredible curiosity and spirit. It is a celebration of an artist who lived her life on her own terms and broke rules with a giant smile on her face. The queers of the world come to the streets to fight for their voice. They come to the theatres to see some sort of reflection. Here was a woman historicising her own life on screen, making a roadmap of her body and desires as proof that it exists. This is a love letter to queer bodies and queer cinema, and to the indomitable spirit of a woman who took the leap of faith.
Santanu Das is covering the Sundance Film Festival as an accredited member of the press.