"Lover Other": Barbara Hammer on the Struggle for Visibility

Interview by Josh Ford

"5 Questions for..." in which we ask WJFF filmmakers 5 things about themselves, their films and other stuff you want to know.

Lover Other: The Story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore director Barbara Hammer speaks with WJFF Director Josh Ford.

Tell us a little bit about the genesis of Lover Other? How much did you know about Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore before you began researching the film?

When I was working on Resisting Paradise, my 2003 documentary that questions what artists do during a time of war and focus on artists and resisters of WWII who worked near Cassis, France, I tried to find a lesbian or gay man who was also a resister. As a lesbian filmmaker and as an artist, I wanted to find a lesbian resister. People told me that during the war one didn’t think about sexual preference, but only about saving lives. I remembered coming across the photographs of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore at Hotel Sully in Paris in 1988, but since my film was centered on Cassis and the Mediterranean coast, I couldn’t include them. However, I could focus on their artistic lives and heroic, incredible acts of creative resistance to the Nazi occupation of Jersey Isle during WWII in my next film, Lover Other.

You’ve been called a pioneer of “lesbian-feminist experimental cinema.” Modesty aside, do you think that accurately describes your work?

As far as I know it does. I am cataloging my film/video/paper archive right now and I am astounded. Didn't I do anything but work for the last 40 years?

How big a part does Jewish identity, your own or your subjects’, play in your films?

In the last two films, Resisting Paradise and Lover Other, Jewish identity is crucial, as I am dealing with the WWII historic period and we all know what that means. In Resisting Paradise the story of Lisa Fittko, a Jew who had fled to Paris from Berlin (and later to the South of France) who walked Walter Benjamin, the great Jewish philosopher, over the Pyrenees before circumstances overwhelmed him and he committed suicide, Jewish identity is crucial.

As for myself, I am of no denomination. It is the subjects of my films who struggle for visibility and life itself that interest me.

You’ve been on the documentary jury at Sundance – what do you appreciate in other documentary films and which filmmakers work do you seek out?

I appreciate the filmmaker who expands the form or genre in documentary, narrative, or experimental. Most exciting film work being done today often crosses and confuses the genres. We media-savvy people want more from the screens than Hollywood and even the so-called "independent" cinema provides. Please don't make us go back to kindergarten when it comes to watching films.

If you could have one Washington, DC celebrity (political or otherwise) attend your screening, who would it be and why?

It would be a new gender-blended person with half the DNA of Hillary Clinton and half the DNA of Barak Obama. Sitting beside her/him would be a Pelosi/Schumer make-over. As for other celebrities, it would be the entire Lesbian/Feminist/Queer/Transgendered/Jewish/Buddhist/Christian/Muslim communities en masse.

Most seriously and importantly I want to say it would be Joy Zarembka, founder of Break the Chain Campaign, and leader of Promise Central, an advocacy group for former indentured servants. She is current co-chair of Freedom Network.

P.S. I hate the celebrity concept that seems to drive this and other nations.


Visit the filmmaker's Web site at http://www.barbarahammerfilms.com and for her Web site for Lover Other see http://barbarahammerfilms.com/lo.html

Lover Other: The Story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore screens at 6:30pm at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) on Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Interview by Josh Ford