“Barbara Forever”
An immersive portrait of an artist, Brydie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever offers a look at the life, loves, and work of lesbian avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Hammer.
Hammer is best known for putting women’s issues and bodies front and center in her taboo-busting 16mm experimental films, which doubled as visual essays about her experience coming out later in life, in 1974, and out of a heterosexual marriage.
“Barbara Hammer” won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at the 2026 Sundance U.S. Documentary competition.
The assembled footage culls not only from Hammer’s output, but also the outtakes, narrative B-sides, and stolen moments that never before aired in any museum retrospective or theatrical screening of her work.
The indie’s trailer starts with a funny scene in which Hammer tries to explain (and show) experimental film to a classroom of youngsters.
