The two pictures, “A Horse Is Not A Metaphor” (Barbara Hammer, “Dyketactics”) and “Relict: A Phantasmagoria” (Melissa Ferrari, “Phototaxis”) were screened as a double feature at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the former as a retrospective and the latter as a picture in competition.
In “A Horse Is Not A Metaphor,” Barbara Hammer graphs her journey through chemotherapy and into remission from Stage 3 ovarian cancer. She interpolates and overlays shaky, handheld footage of herself in the hospital receiving treatment, outdoors on horseback and otherwise interacting with an idealized natural world, like bathing nude in a river with her dog and horse at her side.
Hammer contrasts the two settings: The clinical, sterile world which recalls mortality and finality versus the natural and transcendental world which recalls the cyclical nature of life. This places her, through flickering and overlaid shots of horses in motion, in dialogue with the 1970 film “Berlin Horse” (Malcolm Le Grice, “Finnegans Chin”), iconic to experimental film. Le Grice’s novel experimentation in form and sound created an experience still captivating to its audiences 54 years later, examining the significance of temporality to film; it’s relevant for our purposes for dispelling the mythology of the horse as a metaphor for strength and sexuality through ignoble shots of the animal. Hammer’s film manages the opposite both in its more material concerns and its formal dullness when placed in the context of “Berlin Horse” — and this dullness stands out among the other films screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which typically prioritize formal experimentalism.
While there is no mistake that the simplicity of the film’s message is the point, it’s an amalgamation of uninteresting and poorly composed shots. When coupled with Hammer’s fetishized understanding of nature which posits her as a person entirely removed from it, the cinematography can leave a poor taste in the viewer’s mouth. Yet not all shots are so insipid — the starker shots of Hammer’s form in the river are stunning, and there are tastefully executed interpolations of this landscape with a chemo drip above Hammer in a POV shot. Stunning and poignant, the Geist of health dances above her prone figure. The overlaying of the two worlds of the film suggests a mature integration of both experiences, one which you could almost believe rejects the dualism of the natural and artificial worlds were it not for the tone of the shots of the natural world.
It’s worth mentioning that Hammer has her devotees in the experimental scene — not without reason. Hammer shot what is widely considered one of the first lesbian films, “Dyketactics,” a sweet, sexy, playful ode bringing whimsical turns of phrase like “love between women” to mind as descriptors. If the tone of the last sentence seems sardonic, let it be rectified: The short is great. It’s sensual, playful and dyke-tastic (and seemingly inspired the nomenclature of 1975 direct action collective “Dyketactics!”) — very tonally attuned to the sort of Ocean Mother conch shell Lesbianism that would persist into the ’90s, with women in their 20s through mid-30s frolicking nude in fields and on futons. For a viewer unacquainted with Hammer’s work, “A Horse Is Not A Metaphor” may not be the entry point; it’s a personal, and perhaps more significant film for those who already know and accept Hammer as canonical. This and the fantastic shots make the film difficult to pan entirely: It’s intimate and vlog-like. But that should not exempt it from a critical eye.
Hammer received a Teddy Award in 2009 for “A Horse Is Not A Metaphor,” an international award given at the Berlin International Film Festival to films concerning Queer topics. Like so many giants, she was given institutional recognition late, rendering the moment of reception somewhat shallow and compensatory (think Scorsese’s Oscar win being for “The Departed”). Yet perhaps this and the subsequent selection and screening of “A Horse Is Not A Metaphor” at the Ann Arbor Film Festival are inevitable; you only know a good thing after the fact.
Initially viewing our second film, one is struck by the medium of “Relict: A Phantasmagoria,” the sophomore effort of director Melissa Ferrari. In the interest of precision, it’s not a film, but a live performance — a magic lantern show, a kind of early projection technique using glass plates to blow up an image onto a surface. The medium inspires a childlike wonder; we understand exactly what is happening, but the overlaying of animated and non-animated elements and the iconic billowing effects created by dyes suspended in water are mesmerizing.
In a speech preceding the performance, Ferrari informs the audience on the history of the magic lantern show. The technology was most popular from the 1800s into the Victorian era and was used for quite incongruent purposes. Since its inception around the age of the Enlightenment, the magic lantern was used both for the projection of scientific diagrams in lecture halls and to project demons and ghouls onto walls to confuse and terrify audiences that were, in many cases, entirely unfamiliar with the techniques of the animation — these performances being the titular phantasmagorias. The lecture, well-given and a brief ten minutes, was unfortunately the highlight of the experience.
The dual service of the medium is suited to the film. It’s a sort of ethnography of American conspiracy and yellow journalism, drawing a linear path from cryptozoology (Bigfoot, the Feejee Mermaid, the Cottingley Fairies) to vaccine and election denial “fake news.” Yet this idea — that the usage of media, particularly film or journalistic media, acts as a circulator of conspiracy or extremism — is not new. When applied to this specific context in this surface manner, it becomes tired. It’s been ceaselessly explored in the years following Trump’s election, continued following his election loss and has intensified since COVID. So, too, the idea that what was widely popular in its day will be looked back on as laughable sensationalism is not novel.
It’s also a difficult path to draw linearly. There is much to be questioned regarding how many past hoaxes and cryptozoology were believed — in fact, the opening speech even referenced this criticism. When referencing vaccine or election denial, there is the sense that most who espouse these ideas, or other political denialisms or conspiracy theories (climate change, etc.), are dead serious. But it’s very unlikely everything written in yellow press articles or displayed in phantasmagorias was accepted at face value by the majority of those who read the articles or attended the shows. To some degree, there was awareness of the illusion; the phenomena of cryptozoology seem, in this way, distinct from more political conspiracy. Unless, of course, Ferrari suggests otherwise, which could make for a fascinating thesis. There is a long history of not earnestly believing what we profess to believe and what this might serve, but this performance is not that.
The magic lantern is always an enchanting and, here, quite appropriately chosen medium which certainly took a significant amount of effort to pull off at this length of performance. However, with such a range of techniques within the medium, it would be lazy to applaud the picture for its formal polish without looking at the film’s milquetoast conceit. In trying to straddle the two film genres, experimental and documentary, that the Ann Arbor Film Festival deals with, the resulting show is neither quite documentary nor experimental. It is more like a half-baked but pretty senior thesis stitched awkwardly together: one part fish, one part monkey.
I’m admittedly unsure as to why these films were screened together, the underwhelming former as a retrospective and the redundant latter as a film in competition. In dialogue, they only serve to remind you of their formal dullness in a garden of experimentation.
Daily Arts Writer Nat Johnson can be reached at nataljo@umich.edu.