Barbara Hammer is a pioneer in lesbian cinema. In her over fifty-year career, she has made both classic and more experimental films in which gender roles and female relationships are central.

Yet the experimental Bent Time is entirely different, influenced as it is by the idea that rays of light deflect at the edges of the universe. This could mean that time, too, is bendable. Hammer portrays a journey from an atomic-breaking machine to other high-energy places such as New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge. To explore the concept of bending time, she uses an extreme wide-angle lens and runs only one film reel at each spot.