ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the different ways in which American documentary and experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer’s 1982 screening and lecture tour in North America and Northern Europe engaged audiences—mostly women; many lesbians. Examining a range of media, from Hammer’s Audience (USA, 1983) to journal entries, included in the memoir Hammer! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life (2010), and archival documents and period press material, the chapter highlights the multiplicity of activities and discussions that were ongoing in transnational feminist film culture at the time, from Toronto and Montréal to Gothenburg and Stockholm. Illustrating how Hammer’s unapologetically open lesbian persona and explicit representations of lesbianism were received in women’s film communities in Canada and Sweden at a time when welfare state policymaking supporting gender equality was emerging, but legislative processes concerning anti-discrimination and other human rights for homosexuals were not yet realized, the case study foregrounds Hammer’s engagements with diverse communities across national, grassroots, and more recognized institutional settings to nuance standard accounts of this period in feminist film history.
