Product Details

• Actors: David Del Tredici, Jane Fine, Cocoa Fusco, Ann Maguire, George Putnam
• Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
• DVD Release Date: June 18, 2002
• Run Time: 70 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000065U29
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #177,645 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "History Lessons" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Lesbians turn up in the most unexpected places (and a few expected ones) in History Lessons--as much a collage as it is a movie. Barbara Hammer takes newsreels, stills, health films, and even pornography and whirls them into a cheeky lesbians-are-everywhere cultural soufflé. The piece is not entirely successful; at times it gets tedious and a bit heavy-handed, and one needs to have a high tolerance for the dripping-things-onto-film-stock technique. Still, the spirit is one of subversive fun as Hammer intercuts straight-laced news reports from the '40s with lurid pulp novel covers to suggest that there might be more to these ladies than meets the eye. This film isn't for everyone, but for young women who are interested in a good laugh while they reclaim a bit of their cultural identity, History Lessons may be just the thing. --Ali Davis

Product Description

In her most comprehensive documentary to date, lesbian filmmaking icon Barbara Hammer offers radical sexual politics in a surprise package of humor as she re-traces lesbian history to create an irreverent, compelling and empowering film. Hammer presents an extraordinary array of archival footage -- from popular films to newsreels, sex ed films, stag reels, medical and educational films, antique erotica -- and then playfully manipulates it to openly place lesbians everywhere throughout history.

History Lessons explores lesbian images from the beginning of film until 1969 (The Stonewall uprising). Focusing on these pre-liberation images, the film exposes not only popular lesbian representations and mis-representations in popular culture and entertainment but also the negative images used in the medical, scientific and legal establishments.

In her familiar experimental style, replete with ironic humor, Hammer recontexualizes lesbian images that portrayed lesbian behavior as "illicit" and lesbians as mannish, neurotic, and cold outsiders. She juxtaposes and morphs dramatic vignettes, commercials, and archival footage from narrative, medical, educational and adult entertainment films.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What's the point?, February 19, 2004

By 

Steven Capsuto (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: History Lessons (DVD)

"History Lessons" is primarily a montage of archival footage that has little or no discernible connection to gay women, optically reprocessed and edited to vaguely imply lesbianism. The endless repetitions of the same lab-aged and otherwise altered footage make this downright tedious at spots. Lots of spots.

I first saw "History Lessons" at a film festival, accompanied by a talk by director Barbara Hammer. She is a very good speaker and obviously a creative, witty, intelligent person. I like some of her other films, but this one is too rambling and far too long for what it is.

Recently, I rewatched bits of the film on DVD. Although the director's ironic, wink-and-nudge approach to some of the footage is clearer on second viewing, I just don't see the point behind this film which is clearly the result of a very time-consuming editing process.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Phoney History, February 22, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: History Lessons (DVD)

I picked this one up because one of the reviews on the back cover compared this to The Atomic Cafe. Wrong! Atomic Cafe used historical film clips in order to study a sociological phenomenon (the public panic surrounding the atomic bomb and the US governments attempt to deal with this problem through deliberate and extremely misleading propaganda). In contrast, History Lessons takes film clips which have nothing to do with a sociological phenomenon (society's reaction to lesbians) and completely alters them, sometimes by inserting unconnected images or outright altering the audio with voiceovers, to create an alternate history.

In this alternate history, Eleanor Roosevelt publically declares herself to be a lesbian and becomes leader of a movement seeking to end discrimination against lesbians. Altered film clips, e.g., show that every woman in the military is a lesbian, and a educational film about highschool politics and elections is altered to become an educational film about young girls coming out of the closet. In other words History Lessons is a complete work of science fiction and has absolutely no value as a document of history and shouldn't be marketed as such.

Perhaps there is some audience for this thing (perhaps young lesbians), but I did not find it the least bit humourous. Instead I found it to be a highly pretentious, unsatirical, mess that completely fails to make any point at all, and I also found its overreliance upon corny visual effects distracting.