Barbara Hammer

Filmmaker

Barbara Hammer (1939-2019) was a lesbian feminist experimental filmmaker. Her 1974 film Dyketactics dealt with “the identity of the female artist, the lesbian artist who creates without lesbian reference points in art.” At the start of the AIDS crisis, her film Snow Job: The Media Hysteria of AIDS (1986) denounced the media treatment of the epidemic. Her later works, such as her film A Horse Is Not a Metaphor (2009) and the filmed lecture The Art of Dying (2018) were dedicated to her fight against cancer and the right to euthanasia.