The Documentaries of Barbara Hammer: Lesbian Creativity, Kinship, and Erotic Pleasure in the Historical Margins

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Ronald Gregg
Keyword(s):  
Elizabeth Bishop ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Lesbian Feminism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Queer History ◽  
Claude Cahun

Abstract Lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer turned from experimental filmmaking to feature-length documentaries in the early 1990s. These late documentaries illustrate her distinct perspective on queer history and affect, which was influenced by 1970s lesbian feminism and queer scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s. Her structure and style in these films draw on the tools of both conventional historical documentaries and experimental film. Offering an astonishing range of evidence, Hammer creatively presents queer plenty from the margins of the archive. Through this evidence, Hammer affirms past queer lives, celebrating and highlighting rebelliousness, agency, creativity, queer kinship, and passion. Additionally, Hammer attempts to communicate with and embody the past, physically and emotionally seeking out and feeling the interior and exterior lives of her biographical subjects, who are predominantly creative women, including the poet Elizabeth Bishop, the Dada artist Hannah Höch, the surreal photographer Claude Cahun, and the painter Nicole Eisenman.

scholarly journals Truth and entertainment : historical film as a representation of the past in the works of selected filmmakers

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alistair Heath
Keyword(s):  
Research Question ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Film Genres

The aim of this study is to interrogate the validity of Historical film as a representation of the past and a source of historical knowledge, in the work of Richard Attenborough, Claude Lanzmann, Angus Gibson and Jo Mennel and my film practice, using Robert Rosenstone’s theories, the 6 Codes of Representation (Rosenstone, 1995a) and the 4 Modes of Invention (Rosenstone, 1995a) as a theoretical framework. The main research question is: How can Historical film preserve the historical integrity of a subject whilst entertaining the viewer? Three different film genres were analyzed using this theoretical framework. Films included the Historical Drama Gandhi (1982), the Historical Documentary Mandela (1996) and the Experimental Historical film Shoah (1985). This research interrogates the degrees to which history presented on film can be altered, without becoming an invalid representation of the past. Research outcomes have concluded that the Historical film will inevitably dramatize a subject in order to appeal to a larger audience. However, in making a Historical film, a filmmaker’s decision to stray from historical facts must be supported by a sufficient justification of any significant fabrication, and an explanation of how it benefits the historical subject. This study informed my practical component, consisting of a treatment and storyboard for what I term a hypothetical Historical Experimental film, exploring the Aversion Therapy. These therapies were practiced on SADF conscripts in order to ‘’ cure’ them of ‘illnesses’ such as homosexuality (Kaplan, 2001). It is my hope that this study and proposed film will encourage people to investigate and discuss the Aversion Therapies, creating an awareness of a subject that has had little exposure post 1994.

Bootlegging Experimental Film

2017 ◽  
pp. 81-105
Author(s):  
Erika Balsom
Keyword(s):  
Moral Rights ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Medium Specificity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the ambivalence of the copy by examining the impact of low-quality, unauthorized digital bootlegs on the domain of experimental film, an area of practice that has historically exhibited a strong investment in medium specificity and the moral rights of the filmmaker. I confront these issues through a case study of Josiah McElheny’s The Past Was A Mirage I’d Left Far Behind (2010), a year-long installation at the Whitechapel Gallery in London that consisted of copies of historical abstract films taken from UbuWeb – an online repository of low-definition files posted without permission of the filmmakers – and projected onto prismatic screens.

scholarly journals Delphinium’s portrait of queer history

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-52
Author(s):  
Laura Stamm
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The World ◽  
Derek Jarman ◽  
Queer History

Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait of Derek Jarman (2009) portrays filmmaker Matthew Mishory’s interpretation of the childhood of Derek Jarman described in interviews and autobiographical writing such as At Your Own Risk. The portrait of Jarman honours his memory with a Super 8 inscription that repeats the queer sensibility of Jarman’s cinematic and painterly work. Mishory’s film positions Jarman as his filmmaking predecessor; even more so, it positions Jarman as a sort of queer ancestor. Delphinium’s sense of ancestry demands a reappraisal of Jarman’s work that foregrounds its creation of queer lineage. This article does just that, looking at Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1991) as both searches for queer origins and formations of queer futures. Through their explorations of queer continuity, Jarman’s films inscribe the process by which one learns to become queer and navigate a world that is so often hostile to queer existence. Their preservation of individual figures of the past provides a queer family history and a tool for education, a means for queers to understand their origins, as well as how to make sense of their own place in the world

Brother to Brother and the “Place” of Film in Black Queer History

2021 ◽  
pp. 765-776
Author(s):  
Kara Keeling
Keyword(s):  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Black Film ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spatial Metaphors ◽  
Queer History ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

This chapter considers the ways in which Black film enlists the past when engaging in present struggles. It demonstrates how Rodney Evans’s film Brother to Brother (2004) redresses the elision of queer history from accounts of the Harlem Renaissance. Through a close reading of the film’s spatial metaphors, sound design, and visual form, the chapter shows how realism and the disruption of habituation exist side by side as mechanisms for new visions of Black queer life. It concludes that Evans harnesses the power of sound and image to remake history and to account for Black queer desire and erotic life.

scholarly journals Sketchy Lesbians: Carol as History and Fantasy

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia White
Keyword(s):  
Happy Ending ◽  
The Past ◽  
Queer History ◽  
Historical Discourses ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Forward Looking

Rather than a forward-looking lesbian representation, Todd Haynes's Carol, an adaptation by Phyllis Nagy of Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel, The Price of Salt, looks to images and affective investments of the past to explore lesbian representability, the historical discourses and aesthetic codes through which desire between women can be recognized. The collaboration brings together preoccupations from Haynes's oeuvre and themes from Highsmith's that question reception of the film in terms of a happy ending and future progress. Through evocative art direction, camerawork, and star performances, the film invites the viewer to share the perspective of Therese (Rooney Mara), a nearly blank character written as Highsmith's stand-in, who is subsumed by desire for Carol (Cate Blanchett), a wealthy, discontented suburban wife and mother whom she meets by chance. The lovers’ exclusivity, and even their persecution, are understood as elements of fantasy that ultimately shed light on queer history.

scholarly journals El paisajismo observacional de James Benning: la representación de Los Angeles en Los (2000)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Villarmea Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Natural Landscapes ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City ◽  
Half Minute

El James Benning es uno de los grandes cineastas del paisaje norteamericano. Sus películas se sitúan en la interse-cción entre el cine documental y el experimental, y suelen contrastar el me-dio natural con el medio modificado, el campo con la ciudad y el pasado con el presente, siempre a medio camino entre el esplendor de la modernidad y la de-cadencia post-industrial. Su puesta en escena se basa en la observación atenta del territorio, aunque a veces también incluye elementos performativos. La Trilogia de California (1999-2001), en concreto, propone una cartografía crítica del paisaje californiano a través de sus tres partes –El Valley Centro (1999), Los (2000) y Sogobi (2001)– dedicadas respectivamente a los paisajes rurales, urbanos y naturales. Cada una de estas películas consta de treinta y cinco planos fijos de dos minutos y medio cada uno, un dispositivo minimalista capaz de transmitir mucha información sobre el paisaje, la historia y la sociedad norteamericana, así como sobre la propia vida del cineasta. El objetivo de este artículo es, por lo tanto, analizar la representación que Benning ofrece de Los Angeles en Los para comprender las características prin-cipales de su estilo, identificado como paisajismo observacional, y las impli-caciones socio-históricas de su discurso.   Abstract: James Benning is one of the great landscape filmmakers in American cinema. His works are located at the meeting point between documentary and experimental film, and they usually compare the natural and built environment, the country and the city, and the past and the present, always halfway between modernity’s heyday and post-industrial decay. His mise-en-scène is based on the attentive observation of the territory, but sometimes it also includes performative elements. The California Trilogy (1999-2001), in particular, offers a critical mapping of the California landscape throughout its three parts –El Valley Centro (1999), Los (2000) and Sogobi (2001)– which are respectively devoted to rural, urban and natural landscapes. Each of these works consists of thirty-five two-and-one-half-minute fixed shots, a minimalist device able to convey much information on American landscape, history and society, as well as on the filmmaker’s personal life.The aim of this paper is therefore to analyse Benning’s representation of Los Angeles in Los in order to understand the main features of his style –which has been identified as observational landscaping– and the socio-historical implications of his discourse.Palabras clave: Paisajismo; cine documental; cine experimental; James Benning; trilogia de California; Los Angeles. Keywords: Landscaping; Documentary Film; Experimental Film; James Benning; California Trilogy; Los Angeles.

Observations of the continuum near the galactic centre

1967 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 405
Author(s):  
F. J. Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Galactic Centre ◽  
The Past ◽  
Centre Region ◽  
The Continuum

A continuum survey of the galactic-centre region has been carried out at Parkes at 20 cm wavelength over the areal11= 355° to 5°,b11= -3° to +3° (Kerr and Sinclair 1966, 1967). This is a larger region than has been covered in such surveys in the past. The observations were done as declination scans.

The Origin of the Moon and its Relationship to the Origin of the Solar System

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold C. Urey
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Origin Of The Moon

During the last 10 years, the writer has presented evidence indicating that the Moon was captured by the Earth and that the large collisions with its surface occurred within a surprisingly short period of time. These observations have been a continuous preoccupation during the past years and some explanation that seemed physically possible and reasonably probable has been sought.

On The Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia

1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. W. Small
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

It is generally accepted that history is an element of culture and the historian a member of society, thus, in Croce's aphorism, that the only true history is contemporary history. It follows from this that when there occur great changes in the contemporary scene, there must also be great changes in historiography, that the vision not merely of the present but also of the past must change.

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