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tattoos-ng · 3 years

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Growing up, what were you taught about tattoos?

My parents didn't have tattoos when I was younger, nor did any of their peers, so I wasn't really exposed to them and didn't develop an opinion about them until later in life. One summer, my mom—who is African American—got a small rose on her ankle which introduced the option to me, I suppose. Years later, when my brother was in college, he decided to get a tattoo and revealed it to my parents after the fact. I can vividly remember how upset they were. To them, it was a catastrophe that would impact his career (=life) forever, especially since it was big and visible. This was the biggest and most explicit lesson I remember having about tattoos, but other lessons and implications surrounding femininity and "virtuous" womanhood did not support the practice either. On top of that, I was raised Catholic and my dad's family is very conservative and traditional.

Why did you choose to get a tattoo?

I chose to get a tattoo because I finally found something that I wanted to preserve on my body forever. Something that I thought would always feel relevant. I had been grappling with my queerness with respect (mostly) to my Nigerian side of my family for some time. I'm the eldest granddaughter and my dad's the first child/son, so I've always felt that there was an expectation from them for me to fill a role of model woman/wifehood. I knew that my queerness, my politics would obliterate that fantasy and I grieved an anticipated rejection from my family and by extension, my culture. Before going back home some years ago, I heard a quote from an Igbo poet named Ijeoma Umebinyuo that says, "maybe home is ourselves" and it stuck. Maybe this connection, this home that I am desperate to preserve and grieve the loss of is already with me. A reminder that my first home, my first source of affirmation is always myself. So when I returned from Nigeria, I got a tattoo of this quote with my silhouette. As I anticipated, the meaning of this tattoo has evolved as I've grown in deeper relationship with myself and in better understanding of the intimacy that lies between my Nigerian and queer identities. A dear of friend of mine reminded me that Nigeria will always be mine and will always be queer, because I exist. We've existed. So in that sense, home is again myself. Such a beautiful reimagining of these words, and I hold this tattoo's metamorphosis so tenderly.

How did your family react to your tattoo(s)?

Though my dad comes from a very religious and conservative family, I'd say he's the more progressive of the bunch (relatively speaking, of course). We'd gone back and forth about my clothing and presentation as a kid—when he had the liberty to dictate how I presented my body—but by the time I wanted my tattoo, I was already out of the house (plus my brother had gotten a few more since his first). I decided to tell my mom but not him—I didn't feel like I needed his permission but I also didn't want to contend with his disapproval. Once I got the tattoo, I prefaced its introduction to him by telling him that I'd made a decision for my body and I didn't tell him before because I didn't feel I needed his approval, that I was simply telling him now so that he didn't feel blindsided if he noticed it on my arm. He wasn't happy, but he had no choice but to accept my decision. He expressed a few concerns, and I told him that I understand where he was coming from, but that his concerns were not my own. It all happened a lot simpler than I imagined. My dad, who's usually a lecturer and storyteller, didn't have much to say after that. And we haven't really talked about it since.

How did your job react to your tattoo(s)?

My job's chill. I'm a birthworker and the community tends to be pretty accepting around tattoos—some niches more than others, of course. I do work within a hospital currently, so there are clear but unspoken expectations around presentation, and as a dark skin black femme, I know that having a tattoo is a strike against me in the eyes of "professionalism". And to that, I honestly say fuck it. I love my body art—I plan to get more—and any place that's so rigidly dictating my self expression wouldn't feel right for me to stay at anyway. As of yet it hasn't been a problem, but if it became one, I'll make my moves accordingly.

#tattoos-ng #Nigerian #Nigeria #tattoos #when did our bodies stop belonging to us

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wildeoaths · 4 years

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LGBTQ Book & Film Recommendations

Hello! As someone who tries to read widely, it can sometimes be frustrating to find good (well-written, well-made) LGBTQ+ works of literature and film, and mainstream recommendations only go so far. This is my shortlist.

Some caveats: 1) I have only watched/seen some of these, though they have all been well-received.

2) The literature list is primarily focused on adult literary and genre fiction, since that is what I mostly read, and I feel like it’s easier to find queer YA fiction. Cece over at ProblemsOfABookNerd (YT) covers a lot of newer releases and has a YA focus, so you can check her out for more recommendations.

3) There are a ton of good films and good books that either reference or discuss queer theory, LGBTQ history and literary theory. These tend to be more esoteric and academic, and I’m not too familiar with queer theory, so they’ve largely been left off the list. I do agree that they’re important, and reading into LGBTQ-coding is a major practice, but they’re less accessible and I don’t want to make the list too intimidating.

4) I linked to Goodreads and Letterboxd because that’s what I use and I happen to really enjoy the reviews.

Any works that are bolded are popular, or they’re acclaimed and I think they deserve some attention. I’ve done my best to flag potential objections and triggers, but you should definitely do a search of the reviews. DoesTheDogDie is also a good resource. Not all of these will be suitable for younger teenagers; please use your common sense and judgement.

Please feel free to chime in in the replies (not the reblogs) with your recommendations, and I’ll eventually do a reblog with the additions!

BOOKS

> YOUNG ADULT

Don’t @ me asking why your favourite YA novel isn’t on this list. These just happen to be the picks I felt might also appeal to older teens/twentysomethings.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo - poetry.

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender - trans male teen protagonist.

Red, White & Royal Blue

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda

The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice And Virtue

The Raven Boys (and Raven Cycle)

> LITERATURE: GENERAL

This list does skew M/M; more NB, trans and WLW recommendations are welcomed!

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. One of the most acclaimed contemporary LGBTQ novels and you’ve probably heard of it. Will probably make you cry.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood. Portrait of a middle-aged gay man.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. M/M affair, British student high society; definitely nostalgic for the aristocracy so be aware of the context.

Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman. It’s somewhat controversial, it’s gay, everyone knows the film at least.

Cronus’ Children / Le Jardin d'Acclimation by Yves Navarre. Winner of the Goncourt prize.

Dancer From The Dance by Andrew Holleran. A young man in the 1970s NYC gay scene. Warning for drugs and sexual references.

Dorian, An Imitation by Will Self. Adaptation of Orscar Wilde’s novel. Warning for sexual content.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. Two wlw in the 1980s. Also made into a film; see below.

Gemini by Michel Tournier. The link will tell you more; seems like a very complex read. TW for troubling twin dynamics.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Another iconic M/M work.

Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey. A queer punk reimagining of Peter Pan. Probably one of the more accessible works on this list!

Lie With Me by Philippe Besson. Two teenage boys in 1980s France.

Maurice by E. M. Forster. Landmark work written in 1914. Also made into a film; see below.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. An expansive (and long) novel about the story of Cal, a hermaphrodite, by the author of The Virgin Suicides.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf. Plays with gender, time and space. Virginia Woolf’s ode to her lover Vita Sackville-West. What more do you want? (also a great film; see below).

Oscar Wilde’s works - The Picture of Dorian Gray would be the place to start. Another member of the classical literary canon.

Saga, vol.1 by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples. Graphic novel; warning for sexual content.

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinburg. An acclaimed work looking at working-class lesbian life and gender identity in pre-Stonewall America.

The Holy Innocents by Gilbert Adair. The basis for Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003). I am hesitant to recommend this because I have not read this, though I have watched the film; the M/M dynamic and LGBTQ themes do not seem to be the primary focus. Warning for sexual content and incestuous dynamics between the twins.

The Animals At Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey. Plays with gothic elements, set during WW2, F/F elements.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham. References Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Probably a good idea to read Virginia Woolf first.

The Immoralist by André Gide. Translated from French.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline MIller. Drawing from the Iliad, focusing on Achilles and Patroclus. Contemporary fantasy that would be a good pick for younger readers.

The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst. Gay life pre-AIDS crisis. Apparently contains a fair amount of sexual content.

What Belongs To You by Garth Greenwell. A gay man’s coming of age in the American South.

> LITERATURE: WORLD LITERATURE

American and Western experiences are more prominent in LGBTQ works, just due to the way history and the community have developed, and the difficulties of translation. These are English and translated works that specifically foreground the experiences of non-White people living in (often) non-Western societies. I’m not white or American myself and recommendations in this area are especially welcomed.

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. The memoirs and essays of a queer black activist, exploring themes of black LGBTQ experiences and masculinity.

A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian. Female communities and queer female characters in a Bangalore slum. A very new release but already very well received.

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. Coming-of-age in post-WW1 Japan. This one’s interesting, because it’s definitely at least somewhat autobiographical. Mishima can be a tough writer, and you should definitely look into his personality and his life when reading his work.

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi. A family saga told against the backdrop of Iranian history by a queer Iranian woman. Would recommend going into this knowing at least some of the political and historical context.

How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones. A coming-of-age story and memoir from a gay, black man in the American South.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. Another acclaimed contemporary work about the dynamics of abuse in LGBTQ relationships. Memoir.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Contemporary black British experience, told from the perspectives of 12 diverse narrators.

> POETRY

Crush by Richard Siken. Tumblr loves Richard Siken, worth a read.

Diving Into The Wreck by Adrienne Rich.

He’s So Masc by Chris Tse.

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, trans. Anne Carson. The best presentation of Sappho we’re likely to get.

Lord Byron’s works - Selected Poems may be a good starting point. One of the Romantics and part of the classical literary canon.

Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire. The explicitly lesbian poems are apparently in the les fleurs du mal section.

> MEMOIR & NONFICTION

And The Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts. An expansive, comprehensive history and exposure of the failures of media and the Reagan administration, written by an investigative journalist. Will probably make you rightfully angry.

How to Survive A Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France. A reminder of the power of community and everyday activism, written by a gay reporter living in NYC during the epidemic.

Indecent Advances: The Hidden History of Murder and Masculinity Before Stonewall by James Polchin. True crime fans, this one’s for you. Sociocultural history constructed from readings of the news and media.

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker. It’s illustrated, it’s written by an academic, it’s an easier introduction to queer theory. I still need to pick up a copy, but it seems like a great jumping-off point with an overview of the academic context.

Real Queer America by Samantha Allen. The stories of LGBTQ people and LGBTQ narratives in the conservative parts of America. A very well received contemporary read.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. Gender, pregnancy and queer partnership. I’m not familiar with this but it is quite popular.

When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan. LGBTQ history of Brooklyn from the nineteenth century to pre-Stonewall.

FILMS

With films it’s difficult because characters are often queercoded and we’re only now seeing films with better rep. This is a shortlist of better-rated films with fairly explicit LGBTQ coding, LGBTQ characters, or made by LGBTQ persons. Bolded films are ones that I think are likely to be more accessible or with wider appeal.

A Single Man (2009) - Colin Firth plays a middle-aged widower.

Blue Is The Warmest Colour (2013) - A controversial one. Sexual content.

Booksmart (2019) - A pretty well made film about female friendship and being an LGBTQ teen.

Boy Erased (2018) - Warning for conversion therapy.

BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) - Young AIDS activists in France.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) - Cowboy gays. This film is pretty famous, do you need more summary? Might make a good triple bill with Idaho and God’s Own Country.

Cabaret (1972) - Liza Minelli. Obvious plug to also look into Vincent Minelli.

Calamity Jane (1953) - There’s a lot that could be said about queer coding in Hollywood golden era studio films, but this is apparently a fun wlw-cowboy westerns-vibes watch. Read the reviews on this one!

Call Me By Your Name (2017) - Please don't debate this film in the notes.

Caravaggio (1986) - Sean Bean and Tilda Swinton are in it. Rather explicit.

Carol (2015) - Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are lesbians in 1950s America.

Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) - Hard to summarise, but one review calls it “lesbian birdman” and it has both Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in it, so consider watching it.

Colette (2018) - About the bi/queer female writer Colette during the belle epoque era. This had Keira Knightley so by all rights Tumblr should love it.

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) - Lesbian love in 1920s/80s? America.

God’s Own Country (2017) - Gay and British.

Happy Together (1997) - By Wong Kar Wai. No further explanation needed.

Heartbeats (2010) - Bi comedy.

Heartstone (2016) - It’s a story about rural Icelandic teenagers.

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015) - Queer teens and religious themes.

Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974) - Early Chantal Akerman. Warning for sexual scenes.

Kill Your Darlings (2013) - Ginsberg, Kerouac and the Beat poets.

Love, Simon (2018)

Lovesong (2016) - Lesbian and very soft. Korean-American characters.

Love Songs (2007) - French trio relationship. Louis Garrel continues to give off non-straight vibes.

Mädchen In Uniform (1931) - One of the earliest narrative films to explicitly portray homosexuality. A piece of LGBTQ cinematic history.

Maurice (1987) - Adaptation of the novel.

Midnight Cowboy (1969) - Heavy gay coding.

Milk (2008) - Biopic of Harvey Milk, openly gay politician. By the same director who made My Own Private Idaho.

Moonlight (2016) - It won the awards for a reason.

My Own Private Idaho (1991) - Another iconic LGBTQ film. River Phoenix.

Mysterious Skin (2004) - Go into this film aware, please. Young actors, themes of prostitution, child ab*se, r***, and a lot of trauma.

Orlando (1992) - An excellent adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel, and in my opinion far more accessible. Watch it for the queer sensibilities and fantastic period pieces.

Pariah (2011) - Excellent coming-of-age film about a black lesbian girl in Brooklyn.

Paris is Burning (1990) - LANDMARK DOCUMENTARY piece of LGBTQ history, documenting the African-American and Latine drag and ballroom roots of the NYC queer community.

Persona (1966) - It’s an Ingmar Bergman film so I would recommend knowing what you’re about to get into, but also I can’t describe it because it’s an Ingmar Bergman film.

Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) - Cult classic queercoded boarding school girls.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) - By Celine Sciamma, who’s rapidly establishing herself in the mainstream as a LGBTQ film director. This is a wlw relationship and the queer themes are reflected in the cinematic techniques used. A crowd pleaser.

Pride (2014) - Pride parades with a British sensibility.

Rebel Without A Cause (1955) - Crowd-pleaser with bi coding and James Dean. The OG version of “you’re tearing me apart!”.

Rocketman (2019) - It’s Elton John.

Rent (2005) - Adaptation of the stage musical. Not the best film from a technical standpoint. I recommend the professionally recorded 2008 closing night performance instead.

Rope (1948) - Hitchcock film.

Sorry Angel (2018) - Loving portraits of gay French men.

Talk To Her (2002) - By Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar.

Tangerine (2015) - About trans sex workers. The actors apparently had a lot of input in the film, which was somehow shot on an iPhone by the same guy who went on to do The Florida Project.

The Duke of Burgundy (2014) - Lesbians in an S&M relationship that’s going stale, sexual content obviously.

The Gay Deceivers (1969) - The reviews are better than me explaining.

The Handmaiden (2016) - Park Chan-wook makes a film about Korean lesbians and is criminally snubbed at the Oscars. Warning for sexual themes and kink.

The Favourite (2018) - Period movie, and lesbian.

Thelma And Louise (1991) - An iconic part of LGBTQ cinematic history. That is all.

The Celluloid Closet (1995) - A look into LGBTQ cinematic history, and the historical contexts we operated in when we’ve snuck our narratives into film.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) - Adaptation of the YA novel.

The Neon Demon (2016) - Apparently based on Elizabeth Bathory, the blood-drinking countess. Very polarising film and rated R.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower (2012) - Book adaptation. It has Ezra Miller in it I guess.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - No explanation needed, queer and transgressive vibes all the way.

They (2017) - Gender identity, teenagers.

Those People (2015) - They’re gay and they’re artists in New York.

Tomboy (2011) - One of the few films I’ve seen dealing with gender identity in children (10 y/o). Celine Sciamma developing her directorial voice.

Tropical Malady (2004) - By Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His is a very particular style so don’t sweat it if you don’t enjoy it.

Vita and Virginia (2018) - Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West biopic

Water Lilies (2007) - Celine Sciamma again! Teenage lesbian coming-of-age.

When Marnie Was There (2014) - A Studio Ghibli film exploring youth, gender and sexuality.

Weekend (2011) - An indie film about young gay love.

Wilde (1997) - It’s a film about Oscar Wilde.

XXY (2007) - About an intersex teenager. Reviews on this are mixed.

Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) - Wonder what Diego Luna was doing before Rogue One? This is one of the things. Warning for sexual content.

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larryland · 6 years

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by Gail M. Burns

Diana Oh wants to sleep with you at the Ancram Opera House. Literally. On Saturday, August 25 at 8:30 pm, Oh will host a rock concert/dialogue/party/performance piece that will morph into a BYOB (bring your own sleeping bag) sleepover for 20 guests at the 1927 Grange Hall.

This will be the second of a series of immersive, improvisatory performances exploring connection, joy, and radical vulnerability, which Oh has scheduled at theaters across the country as part of a year dedicated to self-care, taking care of others, and allowing her heart to be fed. “{my lingerie play} involved a lot of activism and organizing, and confrontation. It got to a point where I feel a bit burned out. We have to nourish our hearts to keep fighting. Sleeping over in ‘sacred spaces,’ in heart centered places, is burn-out prevention.”

“Last month my friends and I stayed at the National Black Theatre and wrote music for 24-hours, which we presented as a full-blown punk concert the following night,” Oh explained, “But the sleepover here in Ancram will be a completely different beast. I am trying to act with ultimate vulnerability and ultimate open-heartedness. I want to share something personal with this audience and break the audience/performer bond.”

“Diana’s thoughts about connection through performance – and the reimagining of what is a performance experience – are so aligned with our mission and values that it made inviting Diana to be a part of a season a no-brainer,” said Jeffrey Mousseau, co-director of the Ancram Opera House with Paul Ricciardi.

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“This is my first time here in Ancram so Paul and Jeff know better than I what the audience will be like. My hope is that it’s a real mix of town folks and New Yorkers coming together and creating an unforgettable bond between strangers,” Oh mused.

“We are committed to introducing interesting, innovative, alternative artists to this community of culturally curious folks, who are often not familiar with younger artists,” Mousseau explained. “We love that we’re serving this vibrant regional arts community as well as Diana’s urban fan base and colleagues. We really want to bring together different people from different places through the performance art experience.”

“I have the hunger for simple authenticity in terms of the art I’m taking in. I want the artist’s truth, Oh explained. “I got a taste of it when working with the Living Theatre. I hope I can host an artistic purity here in Ancram, because it is so rare to get that in New York City.”

A Smith College alumna, Oh’s first visit to the Berkshire region came this past summer when she was a Playwright in Residence at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which she found very grounding and empowering as she reestablished who she was as an artist in a new community.

She managed to find time to see the production of The Chinese Lady at Barrington Stage Company, which she found to be a deeply nuanced, honest, and compelling look at the Asian American experience, “Seeing this play about the white gaze with an all-white audience was amazing. Yes, I identify as queer and as a Korean-American, that’s all true, but I really feel like an ocean that doesn’t have boundaries. At the end of the day all of us just want our humanity honored. I want to be seen as a full rich human being and artist, not a token player.”

“That’s why I love music. I’ve written about real people in my life, real relationships. Music gets to the pure exchange of energy, a sharing and caring,” Oh explained. “That’s why the sleep over will be more music oriented, letting audience in on what these songs are about. I’ll be exposing my vulnerability, the things that are close to my heart, looking at each song as itself. It’s witchcraft, it’s spell casting, it’s a meditation on the heart.”

Asked if sleeping over was mandatory or if audience members were welcome to attend just the concert, Oh replied, “Nothing in this life is mandatory! Honor your own heart and body and mind. Come for the concert and then go home to your bunnies.”

Mosseau pointed out that the sleep over and sleepover shuttle were sold out, but that tickets were still available for the concert portion of the event. This is the culmination of a week’s residency in Ancram for Oh. “We invited Diana to be here for the week so that she can create, develop, and tailor the show to the space and the energy of it. Residency activity is something we’ve been eager to introduce, and we’re thrilled Diana is with us to launch the initiative. We’re looking to offer this kind of residency to other artists moving forward.”

Oh’s ultimate invitation: Let’s get weird and break it open. Put your pen down and let’s connect. Come and get free and at the end of the night we’re all friends.”

Reservations are required for the Sleepover and The Sleepover Shuttle. Overnighters should bring their own sleeping bags. For tickets and travel information: www.ancramoperahouse.org or call 518-329-0114.

Diana Oh Hosts a Sleepover Event at the Ancram Opera House by Gail M. Burns Diana Oh wants to sleep with you at the Ancram Opera House. Literally.

#Ancram NY #Ancram Opera House #AOH #Diana Oh #Jeffrey Mousseau #Paul Ricciardi #Sleepover

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topmixtrends · 6 years

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LAST AUTUMN, New York Film Festival kicked off an international retrospective of works by the prolific experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. For 50 years, Hammer has devoted herself to unapologetically exhuming, assembling, and celebrating the lesbian image as no one has before. Her films, produced in 1974, 1997, and 2015, stage lesbians as unabashed hippie separatists, a Jewish sculptor thriving during the Occupation (Claude Cahun), and a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet (Elizabeth Bishop). More than a hundred moving pictures later, many newly restored, there’s never been a better time to know Barbara Hammer — as much as one can, anyway. As Hammer herself mused during the Q-and-A which concluded NYFF’s Barbara Hammer Program: “Do we ever know anyone? I don’t think we do. I think we die alone and we are born alone and I do my damndest to show who I am by making films.”

Instead of focusing on Hammer’s own movies, IFC Center, in partnership with Queer | Art | Film, enriched the retrospective by screening seven early feminist experimental films, selected by Hammer, that motivated her to grab life by the Bolex. In them, we see her fevered adoration of sex, community, and innovative cinema. Dyketactics’s twirling intimacy and idealism echo Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses (1965); History Lessons’s feminist snicker, Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975); and Place Mattes’s erotic fixation on the hands, Yvonne Rainer’s Hand Movie (1966). Who influenced Barbara Hammer’s work? It is IFC Center’s thorough answer to this question that compels me to ask another one: who is influenced by Barbara Hammer’s work? I recently spoke to several members of the new guard on working in the wake of Hammer. Her presence, while purely administrative for some and literal for others, was always palpable.

The 1980s produced a large bounty of Hammer films and Hammer scions: young filmmakers — sometimes lesbian, sometimes queer, but always feminist-identified. Now in their 20s and 30s, they are eager to grapple with the idea of a creative disconnect between generations. “The most important lesson I take from Hammer is her self-awareness that she is inventing a lesbian voice, lesbian view, lesbian cinema,” Daviel Shy, who premiered her first feature, an adaptation of Djuna Barnes’s biting 1928 chapbook The Ladies Almanack, at The Roxie Cinema in San Francisco on June 30, tells me. “Formally, I may be far more ‘tame.’ But I operate from a commitment to lesbian cinema, history, and culture as a real and living calling.”

Sex is an all-consuming part of Hammer’s early films, from Dyketactics (1974) to the naturalistic Multiple Orgasm (1976) to the acrobatic arts showcase Double Strength (1978). These are the images created, unbelievably, by a woman who was once groomed by her parents to become the next Shirley Temple. Instead, Hammer imagined worlds that are still being reimagined by the avant-garde’s progeny. In Dyketactics, women, having taken “back to the land,” roam barefooted through water and leaves. Their active, idyllic lives are emphasized by the 16 mm film’s diligent crossfades of flowers, candles, and fruit into nude women — all embodying a Nelson-eque sameness, their homemade coiffures and fair skin a tad too homologous.

Liz Rosenfeld’s Untitled (Dyketactics Revisited) (2005), shot in 16 mm like its Hammer predecessor, assimilates the bodies and environments that have been left on an era’s cutting room floor. “The visual skin and mix of the technologies is crucial to the work,” says Rosenfeld. Untitled isn’t so much a glowing tribute to Dyketactics as it is something entirely new, meant to — as Liz tells me — serve as “reinterpretation of queer contemporary moment and proposition queer future while also referencing its past.” Its frolicking bodies are varied, some clothed, some wearing that which is in-between nudity and cloth: the chest binder. Untitled’s playground is a cold industrial city, Chicago, understood by Rosenfeld to be just as much of a queer colony as Hammer’s. When asked about Untitled in an interview with Polari Magazine, Hammer celebrated the throwback to her old work, declaring, “Long live Dyketactics and may there be more iterations!”

In Shy’s The Ladies Almanack, Natalie Barney engages in a tryst with Oscar Wilde’s drug-addled niece Dolly, revealing a series of moon phases tattooed down the actor’s spine. The ink pairs rather nicely with the Almanack’s subtitle: “showing their Signs and their tides; their Moons and their Changes; the Seasons as it is with them; their Eclipses and Equinoxes.” Colette, like Rosenfeld’s Hannah Höch, has a facial piercing. While historically white, Shy’s casting also aids Barney’s salon in getting with the times: Mimi Franchetti is portrayed by a person of color; so are Thelma, Lily de Gramont, and a number of other late 19th-century creatives who, while renowned and often celebrated for their work and sexual deviancy at the time, rarely grace today’s textbooks. Almanack also cleverly recruits established members of today’s feminist literati to portray the women who paved the way for their work: Eileen Myles takes on Monique Wittig; Terry Castle, Gertrude Stein.

Joey Carducci, an instructor at Pratt Institute, first met Hammer while working as a contact printer operator in Hell’s Kitchen. When Hammer, impressed by Carducci’s lab skills, realized he was an idling 16 mm filmmaker, she insisted they collaborate. Bolexes in tow, the two roamed through Coney Island’s Astroland on the 46-year-old amusement park’s final day in 2008. Carducci films Hammer as Hammer films Carducci; the resulting project would become known as Generations. A bittersweetness hovers over Generations’s 14 minutes and 36 seconds, as though something new is being born from that which one has yet to properly mourn. Hammer the wiser and Carducci the younger brim with newfound creative energy as Astroland illuminates Brooklyn’s dusk one final time.

This phoenix motif is part and parcel of the Carducci-Hammer collaboration. In 2015, Hammer led A Place Called Hope, a public workshop where she generously offered digitized copies of her film outtakes to participants so they could create a work that was both vintage and contemporary, individual and collaborative. Carducci selected scraps from Tender Fictions (1995), Hammer’s follow-up documentary to Nitrate Kisses (1992). Tender is the closest Hammer has come to crafting a traditional memoir film. “I was born at a time when Shirley Temple was making more money than any other female in the United States. I was taught early to perform and perform I did,” Hammer begins in voice-over, lulling the viewer into a false sense of genre security before shifting into an alter ego. “In Tangiers, I robbed an American Express with my Swiss Army Knife,” she continues, thwarting the viewer’s quest for an earnest documentary.

Tender Fictions was the perfect foundation for Carducci, who by then identified as a transman, to come out to his cherished mentor. In A Letter to Barbara Hammer (2016), Carducci uses her outtakes to ask permission to use them in a broader project about his transition, tentatively titled Coming Outtakes. “As queers, if our identities are expansive and self-defined, am I still a ‘Bolex dyke,’ as we had nicknamed ourselves after making our film? Am I still the lesbian experimental filmmaker you didn’t want the world to lose? Or am I a Bolex dude, another white man in the film industry?” he painfully wonders as clips from Tender Fictions roll. Fearless, Carducci’s respect for Hammer and love for experimental cinema eclipse the weight of his coming out. “I was born at a time when Barbara Hammer was making more 16 millimeter experimental films than any other lesbian in the United States,” he says, riffing on Tender Fictions’s opening line.

If queer cinema traditions possess a shared characteristic, it is this preoccupation with our community’s own expansive chronologies and chosen genealogies. Film allows one to go the distance: to compensate for archival limitations, address forbidden intimacies in the frankest of terms, and approach historical repression with a sense of humor.

Hammer’s third decade is defined by her trilogy of 16 mm historical documentaries: Nitrate Kisses, Tender Fictions, and History Lessons (2000). Borrowing its name from the highly flammable film base, Nitrate Kisses, disputed by funders and faith leaders, ponders the same erasure of queer life to which it was narrowly subjected. Hammer’s early trademark eroticism persists, but with a newfound sophistication: as the gay couple make love, the Hays Code scrolls across the picture. Like its namesake, Nitrate Kisses refuses to be extinguished, even when soaking wet.

The same year that Barbara Hammer and Joey Carducci premiered Generations, Liz Rosenfeld released the first in her own trilogy of semi-historical experimental short films, two being shot on 16 mm. Frida & Anita centers on a chance encounter between the artist Frida Kahlo and Weimar performer Anita Berber in Berlin in 1924. Rosenfeld followed Frida & Anita with speculative biographies about Dadaist Hannah Höch (HÖCH), Leni Riefenstahl, and Eva Braun (Die Neue Frau) in 2014.

This time, Rosenfeld, who is based in Berlin, didn’t realize the parallels between her Surface Tension Trilogy and Hammer’s earlier series. Nor did she realize that they shared a subject in Höch (whose history Barbara explores in her 1998 film The Female Closet). “It’s a funny coincidence,” Rosenfeld says. At the same time, this mutual interest in forgotten figures and their stories seems natural, even imperative. “I think that as queer people we do gravitate toward understanding our own histories, especially because they are so untold, lived through the body, rather than written down, and also based on stories passed down, interpretations of films, books, images that have been left behind, and of course, gossip,” mused Rosenfeld.

Shy, who spent three years researching fin de siècle literary communities before adapting Barnes’s text, echoes her sentiments. “Our history was not codified and canonized, thank goodness, so our history is whatever transpired experientially between women.” It is fitting that Hammer also once desired to adapt Barnes’s modernist fiction (the author’s literary executors rebuffed her efforts to secure the rights to the 1936 novel Nightwood).

The “tension” in Rosenfeld’s Surface Tension Trilogy refers to the relationship between the past and present. It engages in its own variations of Hammer-esque smudging and collage. Apart from period clothing, there is little effort to obscure spatial or physical anachronisms. The three films borrow from the few archival materials available as much as they do a present-day understanding of queer connection and community. “For me, history is at the crux of all my work,” Rosenfeld tells me. “I am thinking about past or future histories, and especially in relationship to how history is carried through the body, which is where my work really lies at the intersection of both film and performance.”

Frida & Anita is shot in the style of a 1920s silent movie, with a letter the author sent to her father while in Berlin occupying the intertitles. The anachronism bleeds through her entire series, beginning with our introduction to the strip-teasing Anita Berber (Richard Hancock), who is presented as an illustrious transwoman. The line between Cabaret and RuPaul’s Drag Race becomes increasingly slim.

An ambitious undertaking, Shy’s The Ladies Almanack, filmed with Super 8 and spanning 86 minutes, also uses the anachronism to link the past to the present. A cast of over 25 is essential to depict the revolving door of writers, artists, friends, and lovers who moved through Natalie Clifford Barney’s salon at 20 Rue Jacob, Paris. While the performers boast the mannerisms, language, and vintage filter of Radclyffe Hall, Djuna Barnes, and Romaine Brooks, the salon’s constituency simultaneously resembles a group of patrons at Henrietta Hudson’s on any given Friday night. This is deliberate. “Any period piece says more about the time it was made than the time it portrays,” says Shy. “My film does not try to fight that fact. The process was always about finding corollaries between them and us, then and now. The anachronisms are to bring them closer, not to give history the middle finger. There is a philosophical and emotional faithfulness to the book that I was trying to adhere to, and to do that honestly we would have to enter the picture.” Like its source text and the almanack form it appropriates, the film occurs over a calendar year, broken up into monthly chapters.

“Recently, I decided to call myself a ‘hystorian,’” Shy tells me. “For us, or any person whose past has been abridged, erased, or doctored, one has to modify the popular story of what happened in order to burrow closer to the truth.” Rosenfeld’s and Shy’s imaginative approach to articulating the past has clear roots in Hammer’s own work. “History Lessons is one of my favorites,” she explains. “I think playing with history is important, and to engage deeply with any material one cannot be overly reverent,” she acknowledges.

Brooklyn-based filmmaker Sasha Wortzel’s work focuses on an undocumented regional history that isn’t as debaucherous as Weimar Berlin or bygone as bohemian Paris. Her first feature documentary, We Came to Sweat: The Legend of Starlite, which premiered at Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2014, details the rich past of her neighborhood’s oldest Black gay bar, recent attempts to shutter the hub, and the community members who, valuing the Starlite’s past as much as its future, resisted its closure. Wortzel has also tampered with form to connect a current audience with its past. In 2011, having accumulated footage of an elderly lesbian in the wake of her partner’s death, she jerry-rigged these vignettes into a typewriter. When a key is pressed, a clip plays through a screen situated near the obsolete device’s paper table. Titled 42 Butter Lane, the installation features interviews about the quotidian (wallpapering disagreements, anecdotes of homophobia) and shots of the survivor’s half-empty home.

Wortzel’s Butter Lane parallels Hammer’s short No No Nooky T.V. (1987). An Amiga computer emits Valentine-like drawings-in-progress and feminist declarations that symbolize the ebb and flow of Hammer’s short-lived summer romance. Crafted at the height of the debate on film versus video, Hammer decided that she wanted both and filmed her computer. Like Butter Lane, Nooky combines incompatible forms of technology to capture the weight of a lesbian relationship that’s reached its end. In both works, death of format and death of lover collide, albeit in inverse. Wortzel insists that the digital appreciate its elder: the analog.

When asked, “What do you wish for?” in an 2001 interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Barbara Hammer responded, “I hope that before I die I can start a Barbara Hammer Fund for queer filmmakers who use experimental form in their work and do not replicate the status quo.” Sixteen years later, that wish came true. Yet Q|A|M’s Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant should not be viewed as the Hammer’s first act of creative altruism. Rather, it commemorates the work she has been doing for young filmmakers, unsung, for a number of years.

Daviel Shy first met Hammer at her book launch. “We chatted and she signed my book with the words, ‘Daviel Shy, what a name — as good as Hammer. Go for it — in film and art, Barbara Hammer,’” she recalls. “Hammer came back into my life once more as a staunch supporter of The Ladies Almanack. At our fundraiser at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, she did an impromptu plea for donations and read her favorite passage from Nightwood.” Hammer, who turned 79 this year, has shared films with Joey Carducci, collaborated with Sasha Wortzel, and screened her work alongside Liz Rosenfeld’s.

When asked what she was thinking after the screening of her films at New York Film Festival last year, Hammer responded, “I thought of all the films we are not looking at tonight. All the exploration of what history is, how we’ve been left out of history, this empty hole that is now being filled by courageous, queer, wonderful, diverse, expansive lesbian, gay, and trans community.” Today’s queer experimental film community is the one she has been waiting on since she became the first. “The construction of sexuality and sexual expression seem to me to be fluid and changing. This is most important and interesting, for it leaves open the doors of possibilities for future constructions of sexual histories,” she wrote eight years ago in her memoir.

Doors that, thanks to Hammer, new filmmakers are passing through in strong numbers.

Sarah Fonseca is a publicly educated film writer and essayist from the Georgia foothills who lives in New York City. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, cléo: a journal of film and feminism, IndieWire, and the Lambda Literary Review, among others.

Feature image by Alice O’Malley.

The post From Hystorians to Bolex Dudes: The Many Descendants of Barbara Hammer appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Best books of 2017

The top 10

1. The Idiot (2017) by Elif Batuman There was never going to be any other contender for my #1 favourite. The Idiot isn't just one of the best books of the year, it's one of the best books of my life, an unforgettable, transformative novel. Only a few books make such an indelible impression that they come to feel like part of your identity, and The Idiot is one of these rare finds. The Idiot weaves an idiosyncratic and charming plot around Selin, a fish out of water in her first year at Harvard, a young woman of enormous intelligence struggling to untangle the mysterious codes of behaviour that seem to come naturally to everyone else around her. (Her deadpan observations are often utterly hilarious, and although it is also heartbreaking, I don't think any book has made me laugh this much in years.) Many of her choices are almost random, since she has little idea which path to take. Central to Selin's development throughout the book is her close, tense, peculiar friendship with Ivan, a slightly older maths student. She becomes infatuated: her decision to spend the summer teaching English in Hungary, his home country, is a result of that. I loved Selin so much that, by the time I reached the end of the book, I felt like I was being wrenched away from a real friend. She is so palpable, so true-to-life – the perfect mix of naive and sarcastic, rebel and conformist, book-smart and ignorant. The Idiot is the sort of book I want to recommend with real passion and precision; not by shouting about it to anyone who'll listen, but by seeking out those I know will appreciate it and ardently pressing it upon them. So good I could WEEP.

2. Based on a True Story (2017) by Delphine de Vigan, trans. George Miller Leave it to a French author to turn what sounds like the formula for a standard psychological thriller into a kaleidoscopic, existential meditation on writing, identity and friendship. Continually inviting speculation as to how much of it is autobiographical, Based on a True Story follows an author, Delphine, who has recently written an unexpectedly successful novel and is unsure what to do next. When she meets the glamorous L. at a party, she seems to have found the perfect confidante. But L.'s influence grows more and more toxic, and Delphine begins to lose her hold on her own identity. The story is sinister and edge-of-your-seat gripping, yet fiercely intelligent and philosophical: an utterly fascinating maze of fact, fiction and perception. 3. Devil's Day (2017) by Andrew Michael Hurley John Pentecost returns to his family home, a farm in a tiny and decidedly old-fashioned rural community, after the death of his grandfather. As Devil's Day – an eccentric village holiday linked to local legend – grows closer, old rivalries are resurrected and secrets come spilling out. Incredibly vibrant and masterfully paced, this is a bucolic tale of family and nature, death and renewal, history and folklore, and what lurks beneath the surface; it only gestures towards the macabre, and is all the more unnerving for it. It's like Robert Aickman rewrote a Thomas Hardy novel. While Hurley's debut The Loney was effective, I thought this was ten times better. 4. Harriet Said... (1972) by Beryl Bainbridge Despite the pervasiveness of coming-of-age themes in adult fiction, it's rare to come across a writer who is able to truly capture the strange contradictions of adolescence. In Harriet Said..., Beryl Bainbridge gets it exactly right and it is terrifying. This is a remarkable, nuanced character portrait of two precocious girls at the younger end of their teens: the unnamed narrator and her manipulative friend Harriet. Over the course of a claustrophobic summer, the narrator grows dangerously close to a much older man. It's a powerful and beautifully written story that drips with unease, feels horribly real, and is perhaps even more disturbing today than when it was published.

5. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2016) by Iain Reid This year I read a handful of books that resembled nightmares in both construction and imagery. This was the best, the most effective, and the most memorable. A young couple are on a long, lonely drive, with one – the narrator – wondering whether she should end the relationship (hence the title). What unfolds from there is probably best described as 'psychological horror', replete with uncanny details. It steadily ramps up the disquiet, constantly veering off-course so you're left disorientated, asking yourself what the hell you're reading (in a good way). A masterclass of suspense and restrained weirdness. 6. Children of the New World: Stories (2016) by Alexander Weinstein In these tales of our incipient future, virtual lives are ubiquitous and the real world is rapidly deteriorating. However, it's the human element that makes these stories so successful and emotionally affecting. The sharply observed details, the rich characters, the imaginative visions of a world to come: everything about it is brilliant, my list of favourite stories is practically the entire book, and there's barely a flaw to be picked at. The best short story collection I've read in years and the definition of 'all killer, no filler'. 7. Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (2017) by Angela Nagle The best political book I have read in aeons, maybe ever. In an accessible but unpatronising study, Angela Nagle draws a line through history from the 'culture wars' of the 1960s to those of today, and undertakes a review of the many, many factions of what is often sweepingly referred to as the alt-right. She writes even-handedly and with a fair critical eye about recent iterations of disruptive political groupings on both the right and left, achieving a perfect balance between academic critique, political commentary and assured, intelligent, non-embarrassing writing about the internet and its unique subcultures. In a year of political turmoil, Nagle's voice felt not just refreshing but essential.

8. The Answers (2017) by Catherine Lacey Broke, sick and out of options, Mary replies to a mysterious ad promising an 'income-generating experience'. This turns out to be a role as one of a series of Girlfriends to an A-list celebrity who thinks he can solve the 'problem' of romantic love by deconstructing and segregating its elements. Lacey writes Mary brilliantly, teasing out unique insights, naive and profound at the same time, about love and relationships. Her observations are so clean and sharp, her voice in a class of its own. I loved absolutely everything about the way this unusual, wonderful book was written – it's magical. 9. A Natural (2017) by Ross Raisin There were other books I rated higher this year, but few have stuck with me quite as vividly as A Natural. Tom is a talented young footballer whose promised success has failed to materialise; instead, he ends up playing for a middling League Two team. Introverted and sensitive, Tom doesn't feel he fits in, and that only gets worse when he embarks on a new relationship. It's a tender, honest novel exploring sexuality, repression and self-hatred. It's painful and precise on growing up and what 'success' looks like. I see it as a feminist novel about masculinity, looking at how patriarchal norms fail men who don't conform. 10. The Furnished Room (1961) by Laura Del-Rivo Published in 1961 and a bestseller in its day, this remarkable thriller seems to have (very unfairly) slipped into relative obscurity. Like the lost halfway point between Crime and Punishment and American Psycho, it charts the mindscape of a nihilist, chauvinist clerk, Joe Beckett, through his life of numbing excess in the bedsits, offices and cafés of 1960s London. When an insalubrious acquaintance asks him to murder his ailing aunt, Joe approaches it – in typically cold fashion – as an interesting moral dilemma, but things inevitably spiral out of control.

Honourable mentions

Books published in 2017

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud The title is apt: Messud takes a tired premise – two teenage girls growing up and growing apart – and sets it ablaze with knockout writing. Incandescent, razor-sharp, breathtakingly confident.

You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann, trans. Ross Benjamin Brilliant modern take on the haunted house – like Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves if it'd been ruthlessly edited down to only its most authentic and menacing elements.

This Young Monster by Charlie Fox Sublime collection of feverish, phantasmagorical essays that pull apart the distinctions between fiction, fact and surrealism, exploring the intersections of pop culture, queerness and self-image.

The Party by Elizabeth Day An irresistible formula (unreliable outcast narrator enters into golden world of privilege) executed flawlessly. My pick of the year for sheer unadulterated enjoyment.

American War by Omar El Akkad An extraordinarily rich dystopian vision in which a future USA is riven by civil war. Absorbing, emotionally wrenching, and complete with a brilliant heroine in the shape of rebel fighter Sarat Chestnut.

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell Not so much horror stories as stories about a country (Argentina) haunted and menaced by history. Powerful, memorable and wonderfully bizarre.

How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza After her abusive partner leaves, Mary becomes obsessed with a wild fox and begins to lose her grip on reality. Hands down one of the strangest, most audacious and uncomfortable stories I've read; it will leave you queasily transfixed.

Ties by Domenico Starnone, trans. Jhumpa Lahiri A portrait of a disintegrating marriage structured like a dossier of evidence, analysing the perspectives of wife, husband and daughter. Packed with emotion, yet elegant in its approach to the damage wrought by destructive behaviour.

Sweetpea by CJ Skuse If you've ever wondered what American Psycho reimagined as chick-lit would be like (and I mean, who hasn't?), this is it. Very bloody, very funny.

Books published before 2017

Call Me by Your Name (2007) by André Aciman You're probably familiar with the film; the book it's based on is more than worth your time, too. A heady evocation of first lust that brings its Mediterranean setting vividly to life, it's agonising as often as it's sexy.

This is the Ritual (2016) by Rob Doyle Lacerating short stories that approach (and rip apart) the trope of the tortured artist from a working-class perspective.

Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) by Mary Gaitskill Chronicles the friendship between two very different – but equally idiosyncratic – women, and traces their tortured histories. Startling and insightful, with unforgettable characters.

70% Acrylic 30% Wool (2013) by Viola Di Grado, trans. Michael Reynolds An Italian girl living in England deals with terrible grief, unrequited love and the mysteries of communication. Funny and twisted and dark, furious and bittersweet and raw.

FantasticLand (2016) by Mike Bockoven An oral history of the bloody disaster that unfolded after a hurricane left a few hundred employees of a theme park cut off from civilisation. Unbelievably fun horror with great worldbuilding.

The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing (2014) by Nicholas Rombes A curious and remarkable book which somehow makes descriptions of imagined films mesmerising. Dreamlike and disquieting.

The Babysitter at Rest (2016) by Jen George In these surreal-yet-mundane stories, George plays with her characters like they're figures in a very peculiar dolls' house. She's amazing at combining the painfully real with humour and fantasy.

Coming up in 2018

The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton You're probably already familiar with how much I loved this, so I won't go on about it, except to say again that it is a breathtaking patchwork of genres, a triumph of wordplay and a total joy to read. (If it wasn't a 2018 title, it would be in my top 10.)

A few more for the road

Life and all its ugliness, glory, grief, joy and horror: The Future Won't Be Long by Jarett Kobek; Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell; The Animators by Kayla Rae Whittaker; All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg; Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle Dark futures, the terrifying possibilities of technology, and what comes after its collapse: UnAmerican Activities by James Miller; Broadcast by Liam Brown; No Dominion by Louise Welsh; The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy Creepy shit (need I say more): The White Road by Sarah Lotz; The Wrong Train by Jeremy de Quidt; The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell; The Lost Village by Neil Spring; The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements When you just need to get stuck in to an engrossing thriller: He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly; Bonfire by Krysten Ritter; If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio; Last Seen by Lucy Clarke

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