Audience Questions:
An Interview with Brydie O’Connor (Barbara Forever)
By Conor Williams

Proud feminist lesbian and experimental film pioneer Barbara Hammer came to prominence with her 1974 film Dyketactics, which showed love between women with a brave frankness. Hammer made films on Super 8, on 16mm, and on digital video, and expanded into installatio nart toward the end of her life. She constantly questioned notions of the self and played with the relationship between creator and audience. She worked for decades, constantly pushing boundaries in form and thought, and influencing a generation of queer filmmakers. Among them is Brydie O’Connor, the director of Barbara Forever, a new documentary about the work and legacy of the artist, who died in 2019.

O’Connor’s film draws its material from a wealth of archival footage, provided by Hammer’s life partner, Florrie Burke. Though she eschewed the attention of Hammer’s ever-present Bolex cameras and digital camcorders, Burke has stepped into the foreground as a steward of her lover’s memory. O’Connor has created a tender tribute to Hammer through this collaboration with her widow, a film that could have the power to teach others about possibilities for difference—different forms, different ways of living, of loving, of creation.

Reverse Shot: I was just out on a walk in my neighborhood in Crown Heights, and I saw the wheatpasted posters for your film.

Brydie O’Connor: I did that at 4:10 a.m. this morning. It was my first time wheatpasting. I was so mortified, but it all worked out.

RS: When did you first understand that you wanted to be a filmmaker, and do you primarily consider yourself a nonfiction filmmaker?

BO: I genuinely had the first spark of the idea that I could try making my own films when I learned about Barbara Hammer, when I was an undergraduate student. I was studying American Studies and History, and I was pretty set on being a film critic or a writer. Then I learned about Barbara and how she picked up a camera in her late twenties and just started trying, experimenting, filming things she was interested in; she didn't have this preciousness. She really learned as she went, and I was so inspired by that impulse. I had no background in art making, I was just excited to try it. So, I actually wrote to Barbara in early 2019. I said, "You know, you've inspired me so much to make my own films. I'm about to make my first short. Can I take you out for coffee?”

I didn't realize how sick she was at the time, and she wrote me back and said, “I'm at the very end of my life, but best of luck with everything in your career.” So then, I connected with Florrie after she died. My first film was a scripted short, and then I made a nonfiction short during the early days of the pandemic, and because I could operate like this one-woman band, I really loved the process of discovery that came along with going out and filming and finding story threads in the edit. I've made six shorts, and four of them were nonfiction, and two of them were scripted, but all throughout I've been making Barbara Forever, so I'll always consider myself a nonfiction filmmaker.

RS: Do you remember the first film of Barbara's that you saw?

BO: Dyketactics. It was on a DVD compilation of her ’70s films that she sent me when I was in college. While I was writing my thesis, I couldn't find her films anywhere. So, I reached out to her, and she sent me her films. And I watched Dyketactics first because I had read about it so much, and it was a great first film of hers to watch, because you get these different elements of what I consider to be so Barbara Hammer: you have her filming other women, and you have her experimental texture and feeling, and the tactility is so present in Dyketactics. But then you see her in front of the camera as well, which is such a huge part of it for me, that Barbara filmed her own body and placed herself in her own frame.

RS: You made the short film Love, Barbara, which I saw at BAM a couple months ago. That film, in a way, was more about Florrie and her handling of the archive. Did you feel that you had to make that film before you could make the feature?

BO: I remember when I first asked Florrie, "Why are you the woman that isn’t in a Barbara Hammer film? Barbara made films about all of her lovers. She was the lesbian lover filmmaker and you were the love of her life. So why are there no films about you?” Florrie didn't want to be in the films and really held that hard line. I was single at the time, totally open to a relationship, and I wondered, how did it all work? Florrie was quite reticent at first, not necessarily to me, but she was like, "I get emails like this. I don't usually respond. I never meet with people.” But she said she met with me because she felt like I was very well researched. I had read so many of their love letters, I just had so much affection for them before even knowing them, and I'm so grateful that she has been so open to me and continues to be so open to this ongoing collaboration. I love her.

RS: Was there anything new that you learned about Barbara's life or her work? What was surprising to you? What was inspiring to you?

BO: As time goes on, my cumulative understanding of her filmography continues to expand and shift, and I'm so grateful for that. I think I'm still learning about Barbara Hammer to some degree. What I initially was so interested in was her turning the camera on herself in the ’70s and her lovers and her relationships and her lesbian life, and then how that impulse continued throughout her entire life. It really carried her through her sickness, carried her through her cancer treatment, and was the thing that made her feel the most heard, made her feel like a person and an artist, even as she was limited because of her sickness. That understanding has only grown for me, and I feel closer to Barbara because of that.

RS: Some artists go through different phases and they do different things with their work, but then there are other artists who figure out what they're doing and then they stick with it throughout their lives.

BO: In the ’80s, she was making more structural work, but like she says in the film, she wanted to make sure the body was still present, which was the way of intervening in structuralism at the time. It clicks the light bulb on in my head, and hopefully all of our heads, that we can both move into the unknown and remain true to ourselves.

RS: Your film’s through line is Barbara's voiceover, which is really diaristic and frank, and it changes as Barbara's health fluctuates. It takes on a more brittle tone, but she's still really sharp. What was the emotional experience of working with that voiceover?

BO: It was intense listening to Barbara's voice all the time, but especially when she was sick, and she sounds weaker in some instances. I did the Provincetown Queer Filmmakers Residency, and that was such an intense period because I just was listening to her for 13 hours a day. It felt like Barbara was talking to me.

RS: She was insistent in calling herself an experimental filmmaker and also a lesbian filmmaker. What do you think has become of those two strands of filmmaking today?

BO: I think, ultimately, she staunchly wanted to be both an avant-garde filmmaker and lesbian filmmaker, especially in the ’70s, especially after she started amassing her body of work, and in the end, she wanted to be viewed as a filmmaker, but really saw herself as an artist at large. That's something that Florrie reminds me of at times, too. I do think that there are still limitations to being at the intersection of queer avant-garde cinema. Barbara’s way of creating and finding ways to share her point of view guided me and pushed me through making Barbara Forever in instances where I just wasn't sure how we would find support, where it fit in the market.

RS: There's a tender moment where we see a trans male filmmaker, Joey Carducci, reaching out through cinema to Barbara and ruminating on his gender transition. In our moment, where there's so much vitriol towards trans people from all sides, what do you think audiences could learn from their friendship?

BO: Barbara says, “Sometimes you plan something, and it turns out a different way, and you just have to be open to any way something can turn out,” and it's kind of a vague rumination, but I think that's also such a good way to put it. Barbara was always very invested in expansiveness within the queer community. Even in the early ’90s when she was making Nitrate Kisses, she thought a lot about transness in her work. Barbara was in her late seventies, and she always used to wear this shirt that said, “Radical, even though old,” and I just really love that sentiment. It feels like such a given for Barbara Hammer.

RS: So much of Barbara's work is about the body and sex. Why is it important for you to see the body and to see sex on screen?

BO: Because it's a part of life. I think that it's something that people are uncomfortable talking about. I grew up in Kansas in a very conservative religious culture, and I grew up in this culture of silence, where there was a big expectation to be modest and be quiet. But Barbara’s films are putting the big “scary” thing in front of us and saying it's beautiful. There is a scene in Barbara Forever, it's the scene from Dyketactics where Barbara is making love, and there is this score, it’s kind of a jingle that plays over that scene. But in Barbara Forever, we decided to take the score out and have it be a silent lovemaking scene, and then we just added sound design. And it's over a minute, and you can hear in the theater people kind of shifting in their seats. It brings the viewer face to face with their own biases.

RS: You made me think of her film Audience (1982), which is one of my favorites. If you could pose a question to your audience about your film, do you have one? What would it be?

BO: I think that I would be interested in knowing the moment in the film that everyone in the audience felt the fondest of Barbara Hammer, and the moment in the film that everyone in the audience felt the most complicated about Barbara Hammer. I think that's what I would ask at this point.