Barbara Forever

Barbara Forever immortalises the work of the pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer, who passed away in 2019. Even more so than this debut by Byrdie O’Connor, it was Hammer herself who documented her own life. Over the course of five decades, she made over eighty experimental films with and about herself. A wellspring of ideas, she captured not only her own body and queerness on film, but also her passionate relationships, her thirst for recognition, her cancer diagnosis and the bond she forged with the younger filmmaker Joey Carducci. “It’s more than a life, it’s a history of queer art,” says the ever-energetic Hammer about her own influential career. As well as introducing us to and paying tribute to the woman herself, this inspiring documentary is also a delightful nod to Hammer’s avant-garde aesthetic, which introduced a new queer cinematic language.