Generations

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GENERATIONS is a 30-minute16mm film about mentoring and passing on the tradition of personal experimental filmmaking.  Barbara Hammer, 70 years old, hands the camera to Gina Carducci, a young queer filmmaker. Shooting during the last days of Astroland at Coney Island, New York, the filmmakers find that the inevitable fact of ageing echoes in the architecture of the amusement park and in the emulsion of the film medium itself. Editing completely separately both picture and sound, the filmmakers join their films in the middle when they’ve finished making a true generational and experimental experiment.
In a time when digital dominates the art domain, a DIY aesthetic is embraced by Gina Carducci, a young thirty-year-old filmmaker who hand processes 16mm film and a seventy-year-old pioneer of queer experimental cinema, Barbara Hammer. Hammer invites Carducci to collaborate on a new film, GENERATIONS.
Celebrating Hammer's spontaneous shooting style and dense editing montage with Carducci's studied cinematography, the two filmmakers, generations apart in age, shoot the last days of Astroland in Coney Island, New York. The aged but vibrant amusement park, characteristic of the 70-year-old Hammer, is a fitting environment for the photoplay of the two Bolex filmmakers.
Inspired by the revolutionary Shirley Clarke film, BRIDGES-GO-ROUND (1953) where Clarke printed the same footage twice using two different soundtracks, Carducci/Hammer go further. Each filmmaker will take the same footage and sound elements and edit her own version/vision. Carducci will edit in film, Hammer in digital, which will be output, to film for the final piece.
Joined together at the middle, the final 20-30 minute film, GENERATIONS, will inspire experimentation, collaboration, and the continual use of film in a digital age and cross-generational mentoring.

details

  • Runtime

    30 min
  • Country

    United States
  • Year of Presentation

    2011
  • Year of Production

    2010
  • Director

    Barbara Hammer, Gina Carducci
  • Cast

  • Production Company

  • Berlinale Section

    Forum
  • Berlinale Category

    Short Film
  • Teddy Award Winner

    Best Short Film

Biography Barbara Hammer


Barbara Hammer was born on May 15, 1939 in Hollywood, California. She is a visual artist working primarily in lm and video and has made over 80 works in a career that spans 30 years. She is considered a pioneer of queer cinema. Her experimental lms of the 1970s often dealt with taboo subjects such as menstruation, female orgasm and lesbian sexuality. In the ’80s she used optical printing to explore perception and the fragility of 16mm lm life itself. Optic Nerve (1985) and Endangered (1988) were selected for the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennials (’85, ’89), Nitrate Kisses (1992) for the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Her documentaries tell the stories of marginalized peoples who have been hidden from history and are often essay lms that are multi-leveled and engage audiences viscerally and intellectually with the goal of activating them to make social change. She lives and works in New York City. Contact: barbarahammer@gmail.com

Filmography Barbara Hammer

1979 Available Space | 1979 Bent Time | 1979 Dream Age | 1986 Snow Job | 1987 No No Nooky T.V. | 1989 Sill Point | 1991 Vital Signs | 1993 Sanctus