This pairing brings together two films by Barbara Hammer that turn to family, memory and ancestry through very different approaches to filmmaking. Optic Nerve (1985) and My Babushka: Searching Ukrainian Identities (2001) both begin with Hammer’s personal relationship to her grandmother, but take the story in different directions.

In Optic Nerve, a visit to Hammer’s grandmother in a nursing home becomes a meditation on the body and mortality. Through optical printing, layering and repetition, Hammer transforms fragments of her grandmother’s body and surroundings into a tactile, experimental portrait. My Babushka follows Hammer back through her Ukrainian roots. More direct and diary-like, it combines family memories, photographs, and archival material to trace ancestry and identity through the story of her grandmother.

The films differ extremely in form and with that, offer a glimpse into Hammer’s continual search for new ways to tell personal stories through film. They move from a personal encounter with her grandmother to wider questions of intergenerational lineage and how to create an archive of memory and lived experience.


This screening is part of Focus: Barbara Hammer, a program presenting films by American filmmaker and visual artist Barbara Hammer. See the full program here.