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Barbara Hammer: A Short Film Retrospective
Dyketactics
Of the more than eighty moving-image works that Barbara Hammer created, her 1974 film Dyketactics remains her most iconic. A four-minute paean to lesbian sexuality, Dyketactics publicly announced Hammer’s blossoming sexual identity after the end of her heterosexual marriage and testified to the visionary power of a woman with a movie camera. The film is a revolutionary call for recognition, a how-to guide to sensuality, and a reflection of the utopian spirit that animated a generation of women in search of sexual pleasure and empowerment beyond heterosexuality.
It is also one of the most joyful battle hymns ever recorded, pulsating with its author’s tactile, DIY approach: Handpainted credits bracket haptic images of women caressing each other’s bodies and discovering themselves anew. The film still feels as sweet as a kiss and as potent as a Molotov cocktail.
Bio Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer (1939-2019) was an American feminist filmmaker, visual artist, and lesbian activist with a career spanning over fifty years—constructing revelations on gender and sexuality, and later illness and mortality. She produced over ninety films, ranging from experimental shorts to essays and full-length documentaries, as well as performances, installations, and photographs that illuminate the representation of lesbian lives. In her work, Hammer explodes traditional notions of female sexuality by showing it for what it is: complex, messy, human.
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- This film was #44 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025