Name: Audience
Director: Barbara Hammer
Genre: Documentary
Released: 1982-01-01
Duration: 32 min
Rating: 5.7
Cast: Barbara Hammer, Curt McDowell, Anita Monga, Ulrike Ottinger

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Audience (1982)

5.7

Runtime32 min

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Barbara Hammer’s Audience is a fascinating deep cut from the director’s prodigious filmography. Relatively raw in its design, this 16mm diary of audience reactions at retrospectives of Hammer’s work in San Francisco, London, Toronto, and Montreal in the early 1980s bears none of the distinctive visual flourishes and essayistic form one usually finds in her filmmaking. Today, Audience serves as an invaluable historical archive, providing quick but complex portraits of lesbian scenes in different cities and countries: the San Francisco women are bold and raucous, treating Hammer like a celebrity; the London crowd more reserved and tentative; the Canadians politely critical after initial hesitation. It also functions as a testament to the power of Hammer herself as a figure of lesbian culture, showing how fully she engages audiences to incite new forms of discourse about representation.

Critical Reception & Ratings

Barbara Hammer's 1982 documentary Audience provides a unique historical record of audience reactions to Hammer's work across various cities. While the film lacks the visual flourishes of Hammer's other works, it serves as an invaluable testament to her influence as a figure of lesbian culture, capturing diverse responses from audiences in San Francisco, London, and Canada. The film has a modest 5.7/10 rating on IMDb, suggesting a mixed public reception.

Why you might like this:

Film enthusiasts captivated by raw, intimate documentaries and the pioneering work of queer cinema icons will find Barbara Hammer's 1982 film Audience a compelling and historically significant work that offers a unique window into the reactions and discourses surrounding the director's influential filmography.

About

An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music, video games, or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art. Some events invite overt audience participation and others allow only modest clapping and criticism.