Daily Stream: Collaborating with Barbara Hammer

In this #TBT episode of our WexCast podcast, we dip into our archived recordings to hear from three filmmakers who were each tasked by the late filmmaker Barbara Hammer with completing one of the projects she was unable to finish before her death in 2019. Supported in their efforts by Film/Video Studio Curator Jennifer Lange and Hammer’s multi-year Wexner Center Artist Residency Award, Lynn Sachs, Deborah Stratman, and Mark Street spoke to us during visits to the Wex Film/Video Studio in Fall 2019. Each discusses their relationship with Hammer and how their respective final films came together. And though each had a distinctive approach to the work, they all eventually fell into a kind of conversation with Hammer through her archived footage.

First you’ll hear from Mark Street, who made the film So Many Ideas Impossible to Do All using interviews Hammer shot with Jane Brakhage, an artist and writer who was married for years to filmmaker Stan Brakhage. After that, Deborah Stratman discusses Vever (For Barbara), which she made from footage of Hammer ’s 1975 trip to Guatemala, and how the presence of experimental film legend Maya Deren ended up working its way into the film. Finally, Lynne Sachs talks about A Month of Single Frames, which combines images from Hammer’s 1998 residency in a shack on the sand dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts with audio that Sachs captured as she and Hammer first discussed the project.

The films screened in November 2019 at the Wexner Center and have gone on to play film festivals and win awards. Just last week, Sachs’s film won the grand prize at Germany’s International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. We're sharing this today to celebrate.