Barbara Hammer made over 80 films in her life time, and yet many don’t know her name. She helped shape experimental and queer cinema, and yet most audience members haven’t seen her films. But for those who have, it’s a liberating, experimental, life-altering experience.

Directed by Brydie O’Connor, the documentary “Barbara Forever” gives audiences an in-depth, vulnerable look at Barbara’s life, as well as her expansive work. Including pieces of her many films, archival footage, and interviews, O’Connor’s film encapsulates who Barbara was, and more importantly, who she saw herself as.

Inspirational and authentically herself, Barbara was a force to be reckoned with. Her films embodied sensuality, sexuality, queerness, love, and light, all bundled up into an experimentalist package. Her spirit, life, and artistic career is well captured in this documentary, which both honors her legacy and passes her story on to the next generation of queer artists.

Brydie O’Connor is an experienced archival producer and restorationist with an affinity for queer cinema. After making a short documentary about Barbara, Brydie directed her first feature length film, “Barbara Forever”, which has had a very successful festival run.

Cinema Femme had the pleasure of talking to Brydie about all things Barbara.

How did your relationship with Barbara and her work start? When did she first come into your life?

I learned about Barbara when I was in college. I was in undergrad and I was doing research for my thesis. I knew I was going to write about queer cinema, but I was looking for lesbian films by lesbian filmmakers, and I learned about Barbara. I read about her work before I even had the chance to see her films, I actually had to reach out to Barbara herself to buy her DVDs. She sent them to me and thats how we first connected.

I wrote my thesis and we stayed in touch a little bit, and I’d see her around New York when I moved up here. I’d chat with her briefly. I then emailed her when I was making my first short film in January of 2019; I didn’t realize how sick she was at the time. I was like “Barbara, can I take you for a coffee? Do you have any advice? I’m making my first film.” She said “I’m at the very end of my life, but best of luck with everything in your career.” She ended up passing in March of 2019, so just six weeks later.

I think, first of all, I was just so excited to learn about Barbara’s films and how they felt so specific, but also the fact she had made 85 films and I had never heard of this women, and I was very much on the lookout for lesbian films. I was really, really fascinated by the fact that there was this women who was making such groundbreaking work and didn’t seem to be as well known as I would’ve hoped.

That was the start, I did my thesis, then I made a short film with her partner Florrie Burke right after Barbara died, and then I made “Barbara Forever.”

Barbara’s films and filmmaking grew and adapted as she did, from the beginning of her life to the end. How has your work grown and developed as you’ve continued in your career?

This was my first feature but I’ve made seven shorts before this, and I think with every project there are things that I’ve learned that I’ve brought into my process of making “Barbara Forever.” I’ve been making “Barbara Forever” simultaneously with these other works. I think one thing I’ve learned from Barbara but I feel like I have gotten more comfortable with myself in my practice is taking creative risks, trying things, and breaking things open and doing something new. I think that was the path through which we were able to make “Barbara Forever”. It’s very different from my previous work and it was really exciting to become more comfortable with taking creative risks.

I read you have experience in archival producing and restoration. Can you talk a little bit about what that means, and how that experience helped you on “Barbara Forever”?

I have a professional background as an archival producer on other projects, and it was so useful to have that background coming into this project because I was able to process and organize a huge amount of archival material. We were working with over 400 hours of footage, 40 hours of audio recording, and so much more in terms of stills, photos, documents and all of that.

Typically with archival producing you spend the first part of the project going out and doing the research to find the materials, and then the second phase is liscensing and clearing all of the materials. My role in this film very early on was I collected everything over a period of time and then I organized it, and then I very decisively was like “I’m going to stop interacting with this material in an archival producer way, I’ve organized it, I’m just going to shift into watching everything and digesting it.”

When we had picture lock, I was then able to go do the licensing for everything we were using. We were working with such a small budget to make this film, so it really was useful for this process.

For restorations, I oversaw a new, full digital 4K restoration of “Nitrate Kisses”, Barbara’s first feature film from 1992, which actually premiered at Sundance. That has been such a cool experience. This is the first restoration I’ve been so closely involved in, and it’s great. I’ve been collaborating with MacKenzie Lukenbill at BB Optics, and they are just so great at their job. It’s really involved logistically getting the materials to the lab and to MacKenzie and working with them and honoring Barbara’s intent, and making a hi-res restoration. I’m very excited for that to premiere in like a week and a half at New York Film Festival.

It’s fun that not only “Barbara Forever” can be in conversation with Barbara’s entire filmography, but this restoration is coming out and there’s kind of new life attached to it. “Barbara Forever” and “Nitrate Kisses” can kind of screen in conversation with each other.

In this documentary, Barbara is on the subway interviewing people and asks “Well can’t we make New York what we want New York to be?” That sentiment really struck me. How would you answer that question? Can we make the world what we want the world to be?

I think that’s what Barbara’s work kind of teaches us. When we look at her filmography as a whole, and her canon of work as a whole, including her archiving and writing and photographs, she was creating these outputs through experimental films of versions of her world and what she hoped the world to be in the future, and that was the emotional core. The propulsive forward motion idea that’s kind of the under current of “Barbara Forever” itself, that our art and our work and the way that we live and create can be a pathway to creating the future we want. I certainly think that is the case.

Barbara was so steadfast in creating the world she wanted in the present and the future and I think that’s so aspirational. Her thing was doing that through lesbian experimental cinema, but I think that can be done in so many ways. I hope that audiences see this film and take it and apply it to whatever makes sense for their work and their desires.

Barbara often had a muse, a lover or her grandmother or a political topic. Do you have any muses in your work, something that really inspires you to keep going?

(laughs) I was going to say Barbara Hammer for the past ten years.

I mean literally, it has been Barbara for the past ten years. Florrie Burke, I’m very close with her. I got married last November and she walked me down the aisle and officiated, and when she got up to the front to start officiating she was like “Thanks Jo Ellen, I feel like you’ve been in a relationship with Brydie and Barbara.”

There are different things that motivate me and my work. I think that I have to feel a strong connection to it and a strong curiosity. I think that strong curiosity and that feeling of excitement and feeling alive around the topic is what I look for in terms of a project, especially right now. This is very much where I’m at right now. I’m putting this film out into the world, spending a ton of time working to get the film seen, and raising it’s profile, but I’m also thinking about my next film and i’m trusting that feeling of feeling alive and excited when I think about a new idea.

That’s what I had with Barbara and was able to name it increasingly so throughout time, and so I’m excited to kind of apply that feeling and that level of interest and curiosity to something new.

After finishing this doc, you’ve taken it to many festivals where you’ve had lots of success. What has it been like sharing this story in a time where we really need it? Have any audience responses really surprised you?

One of the greatest gifts of this movie is getting to share it and hearing people’s responses. I think I’m always continuously surprised at all of the different ways that people are moved by this movie and feel very connected to Barbara and her work, and “Barbara Forever” honestly. There are so many different entry points that I’m seeing people take away and that they’re feeling very moved by.

I think it’s very cool and I’m very grateful, this was my hope for the film before it came out, but I’m seeing that it’s really resonating with people more broadly outside of just queer people, artists, women. I think that people are feeling very connected to Barbara, whether they know her or not or whether or not they’re a big fan. I’m so grateful for that and I feel very proud of that, that people are able to access Barbara and her spirit.

There are definetly reactions that have surprised me. I was at Film Forum, the opening in New York. There was this women, she was around my age and there alone. She came up to me after and she said “Hey Brydie, I had never heard about your movie, I had never heard of Barbara Hammer. I’m in town this weekend staying with my cousin and my cousin is busy tonight so I just walked across the street and decided to see your movie. I’m totally moved.”

She went on with “I’m not queer, I’m not an artist, but my dad is at the very end of his life back home in Texas and he’s been telling me he’s at peace and is very happy, and I haven’t really been able to understand that at all, and watching this movie, I actually could finally feel what he was saying because I could feel that from Barbara. I could feel her vitality and lust for life as she was dying, and because I’m able to feel that through this film I actually can understand my dad now and can meet him where he’s at.”

That was so cool to hear and something I never would have anticipated, something that’s such a touchstone for connection in the movie. It’s been cool.

Cinema Femme is focused on uplifting female and gender expansive creatives. What has your journey been like up to this point as a female creative?

I feel like it’s been a lot of work in trusting myself. Trusting my instincts. I think that, especially in this industry, there is just an uphill battle to be leading a team as a woman, leading a creative team as a woman, and making work about women and queer perspectives and communicating the value in that. All I can say is that I’ve learned one of the most valuable things as a woman director, and a woman in the field in general, is really really valuing and trusting your instincts and standing up for them and fighting for them throughout your creative process.

Barbara is someone who has meant a lot to a lot of people, and broke down a lot of barriers for the queer film community. What is one lesson you have learned from Barbara that you’ll take with you into your future career?

I think that Barbara, in her life and in her career, was very excited by the things in life that forced her to change and forced her to reinvent herself. That’s such a rare quality, for people to be so excited and willing to adapt, especially when there are circumstances in life that are forced upon you. I think that’s one thing I really, really admire about Barbara and take forward with me into my work and my life. Life is such an adventure, so everything that comes my way, positive, negative, exciting, or hard, it’s a new experience. To take that on with a sense of adventure is a path forward I’ve seen in Barbara. It’s very cool to have this reference point, this model, of how to move through life. Someone who saw the world in a way I really relate to, and to be able to look to her and be like “Okay, that’s how she lived,” it’s very cool.

“Barbara Forever” is playing 9/24 at the Music Box Theatre. Tickets available online.