Directed by Barbara Hammer | 82min | Video
-Includes Curator’s Talk by Prof. Markus Nornes
Barbara Hammer encountered Ogawa’s widow, Yoko Shiraishi, when one of her films showed at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. She was intrigued by this strange collective, and set out to make a film about them. Her wonderfully idiosyncratic documentary often uses random images from the films to stand for the collective’s members, as if they were home movies. She encountered suspicion as a feminist, as a foreigner, and as a documentary filmmaker who chose not to live and dwell with her subjects. Hammer has said, “It is the most difficult film I have ever made.” Devotion is a striking meditation on political passion and the gender dynamics in artist/activist collectives.
