Female Filmmaker Project: Dyketactics (Barbara Hammer, 1974)

Dyketactics: tactile cinema by way of lesbian expression and complete reclamation of the body in the face of a longstanding history of male gaze upon women's bodies and the fetishization of queer women's sexuality. Notice how Hammer subverts the idea of nudity in imagery throughout art in her insistence to show the vagina in extreme close up instead of the more male associated fixation on breasts. As Hammer would recall in this interview with BOMB magazine, at one screening for Dyketactics in the 70s a man screamed at the close of the movie upon being shown a vagina to which the women in the audience replied "Haven't you seen one before?". One can infer that he had not been this close and personal before seeing Hammer's short, and there in lies the power of the image. The meaning of saying "This is my body, and it is not for your consumption or your sexualization, but instead it is my reality". This also supports the theory that this is not cinema made for men, but with it's everflowing love towards lesbian sexuality and the female body it would reject all things male, and it does. The recurring image of the camera in the hands of women taking pictures of their own bodies is another example of the control in which women have here, and the lens being shown focused specifically on genitals and breasts shows a specificity towards taking control of parts of women's bodies that men otherwise seek to control (breasts through the male gaze, and genitals through reproductive lawmaking).

Dissolves are the most consistent cinematic technique on display here with images surging in and out of one another with an ease and grace that is only empowered by the insistence upon showing fleeting moments of touch. A foot glides up against a calf, a hand runs through a blade of grass, a mouth clasps over areola, and everyone is nude or in an embrace through all of this. Hammer drops all semblance of the dissolve in the final minute and instead shows two women in the process of having sex. Her camera glides through the sweeping curves of their bodies and slides around limbs and crevices of flesh. Closing on an image of two women wrapped up together as close as they can possibly be, symbiotic, as one.



Barbara Hammer week at Curtsies and Hand Grenades will continue tomorrow with a look at Menses.

You can watch Dyketactics on Vimeo here
https://vimeo.com/101192467