┐ Barbara Hammer └

“When I was seven, when I was sixty-seven, my desire was the same. All I wanted was a horse in my backyard. I truly believed as a youngster that I would wake up one morning on my birthday and find a horse tethered, eating lawn grass and waiting for me. The surprising thing is that I still look. Perhaps it is my naiveté but more likely it is a persistent sense of hope that keeps this dream alive. This same ability to hope and dream kept me alive throughout the rigorous four and a half months of chemotherapy even though half of that time was spent in bed. As I built my muscles back day by day by taking longer and longer walks and hikes, I knew I was preparing for the day when I could swing my legs into the saddle, pat my horse on the neck, and ask her to carry me onto the beckoning trail.
(…)
When I was undergoing extensive chemotherapy, the recommended procedure for ovarian cancer, I never thought I could or would want to make another film. Still, I was not adverse to my loving partner of 20 years taking stills and videotaping my progression. When a San Francisco friend and filmmaker flew out to take me to the country for a week of retreat, I was not adverse to her shooting my bald head and skinny body as I swam in a Catskill creek. Eventually from my own hospital bed I did use my camera to film the huge bags of chemicals dripping into me, the nurse attending, and my own steroid-swollen face. Throughout the hospital time, I used horse images as meditation to take me out of the confines of the hospital room and to a landscape that knew no boundaries.”

Barbara’s web home here