Title: Barbara Hammer at the HFA
Year: 2002
Subjects: Hammer, Barbara; Matisse, Henri,; Harvard Film Archive.; Motion pictures; Anti-fascist movements.; Waterboarding.; Prisoners; Torture; Political violence; War criminals Germany; World War, 1939-1945 Prisoners and prisons, German.; National socialism
Abstract: During a presentation on May 15th, 2002 at the Harvard Film Archive, the filmmaker Barbara Hammer discussed her 16mm feature documentary Resisting Paradise, which she had recently completed during a residency as a Radcliffe Fellow. Shot in the Mediterranean fishing village of Cassis, the film contrasts the histories of four resistance fighters with that of the painters Bonnard and Matisse, who continued to produce landscapes, portraits, and still lifes in this land of light and beauty even as the Nazis invaded and occupied France. While Matisse continued to paint, the women in his immediate family were transferring messages to Paris on behalf of the French resistance. As Matisse wrote letters to fellow artists complaining of the shortages of proper painting supplies, Nazi intelligence officers were waterboarding his wife in a German prison. Barbara Hammer’s film asks the question: How can art exist during a time of political crisis?