Lover Other

Lover Other
(Barbara Hammer, 2006)

Lover Other tells the story of French Surrealist artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore who were imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Nazis during WWII. The women were stepsisters, artistic collaborators, and lovers who left Paris in 1937 to live on England’s Jersey Isle. There, they joined the popular resistance against the Nazi occupation and were arrested, captured, and given the death penalty (a fate they narrowly escaped). Hammer conducts traditional interviews with Jersey Isle historians and residents but takes a more experimental approach to the portrayal of Cahun and Moore’s world. She superimposes and collages archival photographs of the two women and their art and further animates the avant-garde nature of their work through sound design by Pamela Z. Actresses recreate images of the women and read their writings aloud, further bringing to life the hidden history of these artistic pioneers who challenged traditional gender roles and binaries long before it became fashionable.
 

Images: Courtesy of The Barbara Hammer Estate and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.