A Horse Is Not A Metaphor

"Barbara Hammer is a pioneer of lesbian-feminist experimental cinema, having created eighty-plus films since the start of her career at age thirty. Hammer is dedicated to making the invisible visible and feels “compelled to reveal and celebrate marginalized peoples whose stories have not been told.” Through the films in this program, she reflects on the fragility of life and her recent battle with cancer. In Vital Signs, image and text intertwine Western constructions of death with Hammer’s personal interactions with a skeleton, clips from Renais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour, text from Foucault’s Birth of a Clinic and scenes from a hospital intensive care unit. Sanctus is an optically-printed-dream-cum-filmsurface-reality with an incredible use of