ENTRY FORM 2000

Interview with Barbara Hammer

Interviewed by Noriyuki Nagasaki


|What is the starting point of making THE FEMALE CLOSET?

When I was at the Alice Austen House Museum, the curator denied that she was a lesbian. I had seen the photo of she and her girlfirends with their arms around their waists and the caption "The Darn Club". This and other remarkable photos, especially for 1898, made me think she was a lesbian. When the curator said"no", it made me mad and so I decided to investigate.

|Why did you choose these three artists?

I explained Alice Austen above. Hannah Hoch has always been one of my favorite women artists. Her photo collage work is much like film editing and she was a feminist in my opinion from her 1920's work that I have seen.

I was in Berlin at the International Film Festival when I heard that the museum which owned much of her work had given a feminist art historian trouble when the historian tried to find out about Hannah Hoch's personal life. Again, this made me angry, and I went to the museum, camera in hand to see what I could see.

Then I thought to have a contemporary artist so the span of the documentary could cover 100 years. I had seen Nicole Eisenman paint a mural to poetry and jazz in a club setting at a party. She was as fluid with drawing as Picasso and I was very impressed. I knew she was a lesbian so I asked her to be in the documentary.

|Why did you make this film in video instead of film?

The Female Closet is in video because I needed to interview people for hours and that was too costly in film. I was also working alone and could shoot picture and sound simulatneously. The small camera was quite handy and easy to carry around.

|You came to Japan for making a documentary film on the women of Ogawa production. Why did you interested in this subject?

First I think that Ogawa Productions made an enormous contribution to documentary film history in Japan with the 18 films they made. I don't think many people outside of Japan know about this work and I want them to know.

Secondly, there were many people besides Ogawa working on these films and I believe we should hear stories from them about the process of living and working together. These are stories that have not been told. History is not a single voice but a multitude of voices. I want to give the chance to members of Ogawa Pro to have a voice in their own history.

|Frederick Wiseman said " difficult experience", when he was asked the experience of making COMEDIE FRANCAISE. How about you?Do you think making a film in foreign country is difficult?

Yes, of course it is difficult especially if you don't speak the language. I don't speak Japanese so I had to rely on translators. There is always something lost in translation so it is difficult to get a complete and thorough understanding of what is said. However, there is no better way to find out about a culture than by trying to make a film or video about the people of that culture. I have learned so much about the Japanese way of doing some things. It is very interesting to me. I have great respect and admiration for Japanese culture.

|What kind of difference did you find between the women who work in film industry in US and Japan?

I am not working with industry people in either country. I am an artist and work usually alone or with one or two other people. The women film makers I met in Japan have a very hard time right now getting money for their work. I hope your festival could offer some "finishing funds" for work in progress in the near future.

|You mentioned THE WOMAN OF THE DUNE as one of your favorite film in pop corn Q. Why did you choose that film?

I love location and setting and feel that we know the characters in a fiction film from the place in which they live. The constant flow of sand made The Woman of the Dunes almost like looking at film chemistry (for example, the grains of silver halide that make up the image can look like pieces of sand if they are over developped and in high contrast).

The characters live in a film environment; therefore, the desert, the sand, the hole without being able to get out (try making a film if you don't understand this metaphor), the grain of the film emulsion itself made the most "all over" film/setting/location environment I have yet seen in fiction film.

|Your favorite film maker like Godard, Resnais createded the new language of cinema. What kind of movie language do you want to invent?

My work is about creatig a new cinematic language based on intellectual constructs, perceptual imagery, and the physical and personal rhythms involved in creative editing.

By trying to push myself to new horizons, so to speak, with each work, I hope to cut a new edge, create a new font, perplex and destabilize the cinematic language we have been taught. If we can't think and act creatively with new ideas we have little chance to survive as Queers in a straight world.

|In hollywood, Gay charactor became visible. What do you think such a current phenomenon? The more the merrier. Let's just not be "the flavor of the month". And, where are the lesbians?

|What do you think current situation of maiking a independent or experimenntal film like you do?

It is very difficult. It takes years of work and committment. However, it is a challenge, a wonder and a delight and honor to be able to chooe your own project and follow it to your heart and mind's content. Viva experimental film! Viva the real independent! >>


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