Everyday Ecstasy: A Restoration Tribute to Barbara Hammer

In collaboration with Atelier Nord, we are proud to present two programmes curated by Mark Toscano, a filmmaker, curator, and film preservationist based in Los Angeles. Since 2003 he has worked at the Academy Film Archive, where he specializes in the curation, conservation, and preservation of artists’ films. He is a programmer with Los Angeles Filmforum, and has lectured at various universities on experimental film and archiving, as well as teaching in the Experimental Animation department at CalArts. Mark will be present to introduce the screenings.

Everyday Ecstasy: A Restoration Tribute to Barbara Hammer

For the past few years at the Academy Film Archive I have been organizing, archiving, and restoring the films of Barbara Hammer. Throughout this time, Barbara was in the process of dying. Despite worsening health and diminishing energy, she remained an unbelievable positive spirit representing pure optimism, creativity, righteousness, and love. This program of recently restored masterworks will showcase the diverse talents and radical modes of filmic expression employed by an absolute legend of queer feminist cinema. She died on March 16, 2019.

Mark Toscano

Filmene som vises

Place Mattes, 1987/2018, 16mm, color, sound, 8min

An effervescent, optically printed meditation on the liberating experience of travel and place.

Pools (made with Barbara Klutinis), 1981, 16mm, color, sound, 5.5min

Employing underwater photography and unique animation methods, Barbara Hammer and Barbara Klutinis created this vivid portrait of Hearst Castle, designed by pioneering female architect Julia Morgan.

Double Strength, 1978, 16mm, color, sound, 15min

A deeply sensual classic in which Barbara’s relationship with trapeze artist Terry Sendgraff is followed from the giddy reverie of its beginnings through to its eventual dissolution.

Women I Love, 1976, 16mm, color, sound, 25min

This hypnotic film unfolds like an album of friends, lovers, and memories, as each woman is illustrated using different film techniques and approaches.

Bent Time, 1984, DCP (original 16mm), color, sound, 22min

A searching, roving, subjective consciousness explores locations of concentrated energy in a state of cinematic rapture. Music by Pauline Oliveros.

Program and texts by Mark Toscano.

Double Strength and Women I Love were restored by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. Place Mattes, Pools, and Bent Time were restored by the Academy Film Archive.