"Hammer’s intense productivity places her on the scale of Brakhage or Warhol as a major force in independent film." Wheeler Winston Dixon

In her latest work, prolific filmmaker, archivist and commentator Barbara Hammer examines an intriguing chapter in lesbian cultural history. Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore cut mythic figures in the art world: They were stepsisters and lovers who, as key participants in the Parisian Surrealist movement in 1920s and ’30s, collaborated on collages, photographs and installations exploring gender-bending and lesbian eroticism. The pair later settled on the Isle of Jersey, where they went on to perform heroic acts of resistance against the Nazi occupation during WWII.

Barbara Hammer is unable to attend the screening.

Curator's notes:

The Los Angeles premiere of Lover Other by perimental filmmaker and lesbian

historian/activist Barbara Hammer

REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, presents Lover Other, a fascinating investigation into the lives and work of the gender-bending lovers and artistic collaborators Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.

Sanctus
(USA, 1990, 19 min., 16 mm -- Sound composition by Neil B. Rolnick)Sanctus is visually exquisite, and replete with symbolic meaning. Addressing the co-fragility of both human existence and the film emulsion, Hammer has transformed 'found footage' -- into a lyrical journey, turning this raw material into a celebration of the body as temple. --Jon Gartenberg, Asst. Curator of Film, Museum of Modern Art, NY

Lover Other,
Los Angeles premiere (USA, 2006, 55 min., Beta SP)

Lover Other, the latest work of prolific filmmaker, archivist and commentator Barbara Hammer, examines an intriguing chapter in lesbian cultural history. It focuses on the mythical and often mysterious figure of the artist/writer/revolutionary activist Claude Cahun. Cahun is famous for her photographic self-portraits where she appears in a great variety of costumes and disguises, most notably with a shaved head. Ignored or underestimated for years by mainstream art history, her work is currently being rediscovered, written about, and exhibited.

Playfully concealing her identity under the sexually ambiguous name of “Claude,” Cahun was born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France in 1894. With her stepsister and lover Suzanne Malherbe, who adopted the masculine moniker of Marcel Moore, they cut mythic figures in the art world. They were key participants in the Parisian Surrealist movement in the 1920s and ’30s and collaborated on photographs, photomontages and installations that explored gender-bending and lesbian eroticism. The pair later settled on the Isle of Jersey where they went on to perform heroic acts of resistance against the Nazi occupation during WWII. Arrested and sentenced to death, they attempted suicide…

As a completely free and independent film artist I accept the challenge to expand the genre into multi-faceted motions of truths always giving the viewer credit for intelligence and perception. --Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer is unable to attend the screening.

Born in Hollywood as the granddaughter of a Ukrainian immigrant who worked as a cook for Lillian Gish, Barbara Hammer has been highly productive and energetic figure in the world of independent media and lesbian activism. Since 1968, she has completed more than eighty films and videos. A historian and archivist, as well as an experimental filmmaker, she has devoted most of her work to feminist, gender-related, and lesbian issues. She gained international recognition through her trilogy devoted to lesbian history: Nitrate Kisses (1992), Tender Fictions (1995) and History Lessons (2000).

Additional Selected Video/Filmography:
Superdyke Meets Madame X (1978)
Optic Nerves (1985)
Snow Job (1986)
No No Nooky T.V. (1987)
The Female Closet (1998)
My Babushka: Searching Ukrainian Identities (2001)
Resisting Paradise (2003)

To know more about Barbara Hammer and the Lesbian Archive, click here.

About Claude Cahun

To mirror, to fix, these are the words that have no meaning here"; under the mask is another mask, I will never finish lifting all these faces. --Claude Cahun, Aveux non avenues (1930, republished 2002)

A poet, essayist, literary critic, novelist, surrealist, symbolist, translator, comedienne, "constructor and explorer of objects," photographer and revolutionary activist, Claude Cahun exhibited with the Surrealists in Paris and London, published a number of essays and critiques, and created a formidable body of work in photography and photo-montage. According to her biographer, François Lepelier, she would make ravaging entrances on the arms of her life-long companion Suzanne Malherbe (AKA Marcel Moore), "in extravagant dress or in the suit of a man, monocle over one eye." She cross-dressed both as the subject of her own photographs and as the object of public gaze, turning gender constructs on their heads by assuming the masquerade of either gender at will.

Having settled in Jersey in 1937, Cahun and Moore became active as resistance fighters and propagandists following the outbreak of World War 2 and the German invasion of the island. One of their methods was to write notes, sometimes with drawings, to inspire mutiny among the German troops on Jersey. These notes were tossed into the cars of the occupying forces or stuffed into the pockets of German soldiers. They were arrested in 1944 by the Gestapo and condemned to death. During their imprisonment (July 25 1944 - May 8 1945), their home was several times searched and looted. An essential part of their photographic works and archives was irretrievably lost. Cahun and Moore barely escaped execution. After the liberation, they had planned to return to Paris but Cahun's health never recovered from her treatment in jail and she died in 1954.

Claude Cahun’s homepage
Wikipedia article
See also: www.vinland.org/scamp/Cahun/

The Jack H. Skirball Screening Series is curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.