Double Strength

Double Strength

Barbara Hammer
1978, 14:38 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video

Description

"A poetic study of the stages of a lesbian relationship by two women performance artists from honeymoon, through struggle, to break-up, to enduring friendship. Starring Terry Sendgraff on trapeze." — Barbara Hammer

"The poetry of Barbara's images carries us through the duration of a relationship: its intensely erotic beginnings, its sense of serenity, its playfulness and comedy and its closure -- the alienation, pain, anger and loss of contact. The death of the body, a theme tenderly interwoven into the ageless strength and agility of Terry Sendgraff's body, becomes the death of a relationship, a closing out, a leaving of the body behind. The body becomes a source of life. Its movement, grace, pain and happiness are contrasted with the inertness of things and the stillness of photos that merely document the brief passage of light." — Jacquelyn Zita, Jump Cut

This film was preserved by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Academy Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.