Three Queer Films About Art, Legacy, and Making Something Last

Three films, one question: what does your work leave behind?

This week, a new documentary about Barbara Hammer arrives in the conversation. Hammer was one of the most important lesbian filmmakers of the twentieth century. Her work is raw, political, and formally daring. That felt like the right moment to look at three films that circle the same question: what does an artist leave behind? Not just technically — but emotionally. These three films are very different in style and origin. But all three ask what it means to make something that outlasts you.

Barbara Forever (2024) — dir. Brydie O'Connor

Barbara Hammer died in 2019. She was 79 years old. For decades, she made films that nobody else was making. Experimental lesbian cinema, before that phrase even existed as a category. Director Brydie O'Connor spent years in Hammer's archive. The result is a documentary that feels intimate and urgent at the same time. O'Connor doesn't just celebrate Hammer. She also asks difficult questions. About visibility. About what gets preserved and what disappears. The film uses Hammer's own footage generously. You see her process, her humor, her stubbornness. The editing is smart — it mirrors the fragmented, collage-like quality of Hammer's own work. This is not a standard arts biography. It moves like a Hammer film itself. For anyone curious about film history, or about how queer art survives, this is essential viewing. Check listings for festival screenings and arthouse cinema release dates in your area.

Caravaggio (1986) — dir. Derek Jarman

Derek Jarman made this film for very little money. It shows — in the best possible way. Jarman tells the story of the Italian baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The film moves between the seventeenth century and deliberate anachronisms: a calculator, a newspaper, a motorbike. Jarman is not interested in historical accuracy. He is interested in desire, power, and what beauty costs. Nigel Terry plays Caravaggio with quiet authority. Tilda Swinton appears in an early role. The cinematography by Gabriel Beristain imitates Caravaggio's own use of light and shadow. Dark frames, sudden brightness, faces emerging from black. It is formally beautiful and emotionally cold in ways that feel entirely intentional. Jarman understood that art and loneliness often live together. This is a film about a gay artist, made by a gay filmmaker, at a time when that still took courage. You can find Caravaggio on MUBI and on various physical media platforms.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) — dir. Céline Sciamma

Céline Sciamma's film is set in eighteenth-century France. A painter, Marianne, is hired to secretly paint the portrait of a young woman named Héloïse. Héloïse does not know she is being painted. What follows is a love story, but also a film about looking. About who looks, and who is seen. Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel carry the film entirely. There is no score for most of the running time. Sciamma uses silence and ambient sound instead. The effect is striking. You notice things: fire, water, the scratch of a brush. The film has been widely praised and rightly so. But it is not sentimental. It is precise. Sciamma builds tension through restraint. Every frame is composed with real intention. The ending has been discussed widely — we will not go further than the first half here — but it is among the most discussed conclusions in recent cinema. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is available on MUBI and to rent or buy on most digital platforms.

If you enjoyed Portrait of a Lady on Fire and want more films about connection and loss, our roundup Three Queer Films About Endings, Goodbyes, and Moving On covers similar emotional terrain from different angles.

What connects these three films

All three films are made by or about queer artists. All three take the work of making art seriously. Not as decoration, but as survival. Barbara Hammer filmed her own life because mainstream cinema ignored it. Derek Jarman found in Caravaggio a mirror for his own experience as a gay man in Britain. Céline Sciamma built a film in which the act of painting becomes an act of love and also of grief. None of these films are easy. None of them offer simple comfort. But all three argue that art matters — not just as product, but as evidence that someone was here, and saw things clearly. That feels like enough reason to watch all three.

For more on queer cinema that takes domestic and creative life seriously, see our earlier piece Three Queer Films About Parenthood, Home, and Making a Life.