Barbara Hammer has made over eighty films and video works over the past forty years. Her experimental films of the 1970s often dealt with taboo subjects such as menstruation, female orgasm, and lesbian sexuality. She received the first Shirley Clarke Avant-Garde Filmmaker Award in October 2006, the Women In Film Award from the St. Louis International Film Festival in 2006, and the Teddy Award for best short film for A Horse Is Not A Metaphor at the 2009 International Berlin Film Festival.