Since the mid-seventies, experimental film and video maker Barbara Hammer has explored in radically innovative ways issues such as lesbian sexuality, and collectivity. The Female Closet takes an historical look at the world of "high art" through the lives and work of three women artists: turn of the century photographer Alice Austen; Hannah Höch, most famous for her Dada photomontages and New York based Nicole Eisenman, wunderkind of the contemporary lesbian chic art scene. Each of these stories poses fundamental questions about the (re)construction of history, class, sexuality identity, and identity politics. The Female Closet, won the "Heart Throb" award by the French Womens' Journalist Association at the 20th Anniversary Festival de Films des Femmes, Creteil, France, in March 1998. In the same month, it also received the Bronze Apple Award from the National Educational Media Alliance and a Director's Choice Award from the Charlotte Film and Video Festival in North Carolina.