Barbara Hammer
| Barbara Hammer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 15, 1939 Hollywood, California, US |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Website | Official website |
Barbara Hammer (born May 15, 1939) is an American feminist filmmaker known for being one of the pioneers 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.
Hammer was born in Hollywood, California, becoming familiar with the film industry from a young age, as her grandfather worked as a cook for the American film director D.W. Griffith.
In 1961, Hammer graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology at University of California Los Angeles. She received a master's degree in English literature in 1963. In the early 1970s she studied film at San Francisco State University. This is where she first encountered Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon, which inspired her to make experimental films about her personal life.
In 1974, she was married and teaching at a community college in Santa Rosa, California. Around this time she came out as a lesbian, after talking with another student in a feminist group. After leaving her marriage, she "took off on a motorcycle with a Super-8 camera." That year she filmed Dyketatics which is widely considered one of the first lesbian films. She graduated with a Masters in film from San Francisco State University.
She released her first feature film, an experimental documentary, Nitrate Kisses in 1992. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. It won the Polar Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Best Documentary Award at the Internacional de Cine Realizado por Mujeres in Madrid.
Hammer received a Post Masters in Multi-Media Digital Studies, at the American Film Institute in 1997.
In 2000 she received the Moving Image award from Creative Capital and in 2013 she was a Guggenheim Fellow.
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