Review: The vitality of a queer filmmaking pioneer comes to life in 'Barbara Forever'

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Set us as preferred Like the Marines, great artists don’t really die, they just endure through new waves of admirers.That sense of a body of art, one with an endless capacity to exist sensually and meaningfully, is the powerful message of “Barbara Forever,” Brydie O’Connor’s pulsating documentary ode to the ceaseless drive of trailblazing lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer (“Nitrate Kisses”).Get ready to potentially feel joyful and self-analytical afterward — Hammer packed a lot of expression into her out years, all the way to her death from ovarian cancer in 2019.Avoiding the traps of stuffy academic assessment or testimonial-studded tribute, O’Connor goes the immersive route, letting Hammer’s own voice accompany a deftly edited archival journey that moves easily across personal reflection and societal impact.

The emotions of that approach are set up by a vérité opening, in which we see Hammer and her partner of decades, Florrie Burke, prepare to send her papers to Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.Movies We’ve mapped out 27 of the best movie theaters in L.A., from the TCL Chinese and the New Beverly to the Alamo Drafthouse and which AMC reigns in Burbank.Hammer turned her experiences into a legacy of never-before-tapped perspective, from the moment she was a 30-year-old divorcee and another woman’s touch changed (and started) everything.

She not only needed to live as a lesbian, but pick up a camera and convey its carnal, intellectual, affirming power.The movies themselves, from her early ’70s ecstatically sex-filled shorts (“Dyketactics”) to inquisitive relationship documents (“Double Strength”) and spatially expansive mind-body explorations (“Optic Nerve”), reveal a timeline of tactility as she gets older and considers her visibility as a lesbian artist in a cultural...