Barbara Forever (2026) by Brydie O’Connor
Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 7:00 pm
Barbara Forever
Alternative Visions — Program 2
Presented in association with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Admission: $18 General / $12 Cinematheque Members
Event tickets here
Alternative Visions
September 9–November 18, 2026
This fall BAMPFA’s long-running annual series of historical and contemporary experimental film includes the work of dozens of artists across ten programs, beginning with a program of cinematic investigations into automation and AI with Gibbs Chapman in person. The series continues into November with a program of films made by members of the Oakland-based Black Hole Collective Film Lab. Brydie O’Connor is in person with her archival portrait of queer experimental film pioneer Barbara Hammer. The late Marjorie Keller’s intimate 16mm films have a rare screening to mark the publication of a new book about her work. Artist Naeem Mohaiemen presents and discusses A Missing Can of Film (2025) in conjunction with BAM’s exhibition Private Frontiers. A selection of works made by COUSIN collective artists, including Sky Hopinka’s 2017 consideration of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest and Lindsay McIntyre’s film about caribou and lichen—made using those materials in the photographic process—screen with Lebanese artist Christophe Katrib’s This Dissonance (2024). Harun Farocki’s influential 2003 essay film War at a Distance and Gazan artist Mahmoud Alhaj’s recent videos examine how perception can be limited in the context of war and/or conflict. (Kate MacKay, Film Curator)
Alternative Visions
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Alternative Visions, program 2: Barbara Forever
In Conversation: Brydie O’Connor and Luis Madrigal
“Pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer takes center stage in Brydie O’Connor’s Teddy Award-winning debut feature. Throughout her monumental career, Hammer made over ninety moving-image works that often centered on her own life, body, and lovers when such life-affirming, honest depictions of sapphic people were scarce. Bolstered by exquisitely edited archival footage, this beautifully intimate documentary assembles an equally lyrical portrait of the visual poet, illuminating how Hammer’s legacy continues to inspire artists and preserve our shared histories. At the same time, it never loses sight of the ambitious, funny, bold and joyful woman at its center” (Kate Bove, Frameline).
SCREENING: Barbara Forever (2026) by Brydie O’Connor (US); DCP, color, 102 minutes. Source: Strand Releasing.
TRT: 102 minutes