In partnership with Nevermind Pictures and Killer Films, Waxwork Records is excited to release BARBARA FOREVER Original Motion Picture Score by Taul Katz. Barbara Forever, directed by Brydie O’Connor, explores the films, archive, and ongoing cultural impact of experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. The biopic reveals her ingenious, lifelong effort to create and record lesbian histories, personal and societal. Through her own images and words, the film centers Hammer as a prism of the cultural ecosystems around her, through the feminist and queer movements in 1970s San Francisco; the male-dominated New York art world of the ‘80s; the New Queer Cinema movement of the ‘90s; and expanded LGBTQIA+ representation in art and culture in the 2000s. Driven by her canon of over eighty films, a vast collection of unreleased archival materials, hundreds of hours of footage, personal photographs and ephemera, and extensive audio interviews, Barbara Forever tells Hammer’s story through her own voice and visual perspective, making her the expert on her life, vision, and motivations. The score, by New York City-based composer, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist Taul Katz, heightens the reverence. “I was able to really experiment in making the Barbara Forever score,” they say. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I don't think I've ever made something like this before.’ It was a really exciting feeling to be surprised by my own music." Katz built a custom sound library generated from Hammer’s film archive and on the music, they play guitar, bass, and synthesizer, while guiding a band that featured harp, piano, cello, woodwinds, trombone, and drums. Samples from the archive formed the basis for cues, utilized by Katz to create something entirely new. The music is a spellbinding match for the film itself, which tells Hammer’s story through her own voice and visual perspective. “Out of Barbara Hammer’s massive archive, I created a library of sounds to sample within the score. The library was then like a new, filtered archive born from Barbara’s. It was really special to have the trust of the creative team, and The Estate of Barbara Hammer, to really experiment with these fragments to create something new,” Katz reflects. The outcome is as groundbreaking as the subject matter. Hammer’s films break taboos around female sexuality, aging, illness, and queer love, often using her own body as a site of exploration and political power. Through the course of the film, she shows us that the personal is not only political, the personal is historical. Looking to Hammer as one of the first filmmakers to put a full lesbian life on screen that wasn’t there before, her work becomes a blueprint for a new generation of queer and radical artists to write their own histories into existence. This exploration of both Hammer’s life, work, archive, and her ongoing legacy provides an urgent, necessary story of queer life, feminist history, and American cinema. BARBARA FOREVER Original Motion Picture Score Features: The Score by Composer Taul Katz Purple and Violet Swirl Vinyl Director Liner Notes by Brydie O'Connor Composer Liner Notes by Taul Katz Printed Inner Sleeves 11"x11" Full Color Insert Layout and Design by Matt Needle
