news & booze

trishbendix:

One of the best interviews/discussions/conversations I’ve had this year was with Barbara Hammer. We talked for 45 minutes or so, until she had to go to yoga class, which I completely understood. (Get it in while you can.) 

The final piece on AfterEllen received three comments. A piece about Glee, though, can reach upwards of 100. A sad reality that is our lack of lesbian history, even when it comes to accessible things such as film and art. As someone who made one of the first ever lesbian sex scenes on film (1973), you’d think we’d care more about her thoughts on why lesbian films and filmmakers tend to get such a bad reputation. Barbara told me:

That’s a good point, and you can say, “Why is that? Is that true?” Then you go to queer film festivals and you see a lot more gay films that are good, that are well-written, and good acting, good directing. The reason for that is because money for men has been way over the top compared to women. It’s been that way, it continues that way. The festivals, not many of them are 50/50 percent, even in their programming. Girls are having a harder time, still. Things haven’t changed in terms of directors in Hollywood.

So many lesbians want to be filmmakers, maybe they think, “We don’t have enough lesbian films so I can just jump in and do something.” A lot of them can. You grow from your mistakes. Seeing Sarah Jacobson’s Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore last night, this feminist, heterosexual, DIY, punk film that just had so much courage in it that you forgave that the lighting wasn’t good, that the acting was so-so, or that she didn’t use close-ups and all the things we expect. But then you go back to Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames in 1983, and it’s incredibly courageous and wild and out there, and both lesbian, queer, and straight, black and white and Asian, and the world is revolutionized in a film that is revolutionary in its own content. That is exciting cinema. That doesn’t mean she continued in that vein, because she didn’t. She did Working Girls, didn’t she? And then we haven’t heard from her.

That would be interesting, to go back to some of those films that were hits in the ’70s and early ’80s and find what’s become of the filmmakers that didn’t continue, who just did one or two films, like She Must Be Seeing Things, and why. Then you’d have the answer to your question.

Barbara is more respected in the art world, as she just had an exhibition at MOMA, but it’s still interesting to see how a lesbian can make great lesbian content that becomes respected in the straight world and still be ignored by much of her community. Ironically, she’s a huge celebrator of our lesbian past as well, as in The Female Closet where she introduces us to women like photographer Alice Austen, whose work was so Sapphic, no one even thought to see it that way at the time. It was way too risky.

And that’s the kind of lesbian history I’d like to celebrate this month.