Barbara Hammer, an internationally recognized film artist who has made eighty films and videos, is considered a pioneer of lesbian-feminist experimental cinema. Her trilogy of documentary film essays on lesbian and gay history -- "Nitrate Kisses" (1992), "Tender Fictions" (1995), and "History Lessons" (2000) -- has received numerous awards and screened and Sundance, the Berlin Film Festival, and more. She has had retrospectives at The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska, The Film Forum in Los Angeles and most recently, at the Out In Africa Film Festival in Capetown, South Africa (1994). Many of her films are in permanent collections and film libraries at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the National Film Archives in Brussels, and the Donnell Library in New York City. Hammer's films were selected for the 1987, 1989, and 1993 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennials in New York. She has taught at many institutions including School of the Art Institute, Chicago; California College of Arts and Crafts, the San Francisco Art Institute, School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, School of the Visual Arts, and The New School for Social Research.

Barbara Hammer earned an MA in film at San Francisco State University. She lives and works in New York City.