Intimate Vision: Films by Chick Strand 1

Date: 15 November 2012 | Season: Chick Strand

INTIMATE VISION: FILMS BY CHICK STRAND 1
Thursday 15 November 2012, at 8pm
Barcelona CCCB Xcèntric

As one of the instigators of Canyon Cinema, Chick Strand (1931-2009) was at the heart of 1960s West Coast avant-garde. Her body of work, comprising of found footage and personally photographed material, has an astounding strength and vitality. Strand’s camera is almost continually in motion, catching details in kinetic close-up to convey celebrations of intimacy and the joys of living.

Chick Strand, Cartoon le Mousse, USA, 1979, 15 min
Chick Strand, Mosori Monika, USA, 1970, 20 min
Chick Strand, Angel Blue Sweet Wings, USA, 1966, 3 min
Chick Strand, Loose Ends, USA, 1979, 25 min
Chick Strand, Artificial Paradise, USA, 1986, 13 min
Chick Strand, Kristallnacht, USA, 1979, 7 min

‘For most of her filmmaking career, the integrity of Strand’s vision lay aslant of prevailing fashions, so that only belatedly did the full significance of her radically pioneering work in ethnographic, documentary, feminist, and compilation filmmaking – and above all, in the innovation of a unique film language created across these modes – become clear. Though feminism and other currents of her times are woven through her films and though her powerful teaching presence sustained the ideals of underground film in several film schools in Los Angeles, hers was essentially a school of one.’ (David James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde)

Loose Ends was preserved by Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley. All other films preserved by Pacific Film Archive in collaboration with Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Intimate Vision: Films by Chick Strand 2

Date: 16 November 2012 | Season: Chick Strand

INTIMATE VISION: FILMS BY CHICK STRAND 2
Friday 16 November 2012, at 8pm
Barcelona CCCB Xcèntric

As one of the instigators of Canyon Cinema, Chick Strand (1931-2009) was at the heart of 1960s West Coast avant-garde. Her body of work, comprising of found footage and personally photographed material, has an astounding strength and vitality. Strand’s camera is almost continually in motion, catching details in kinetic close-up to convey celebrations of intimacy and the joys of living.

Chick Strand, Soft Fiction, USA, 1979, 54 min

‘Chick Strand’s Soft Fiction is a personal documentary that brilliantly portrays the survival power of female sensuality. It combines the documentary approach with a sensuous lyrical expressionism. Strand focuses her camera on people talking about their own experience, capturing subtle nuances in facial expressions and gestures that are rarely seen in cinema. The title Soft Fiction works on several levels. It evokes the soft line between truth and fiction that characterizes Strand’s own approach to documentary, and suggests the idea of softcore fiction, which is appropriate to the film’s erotic content and style. It’s rare to find an erotic film with a female perspective dominating both the narrative discourse and the visual and audio rhythms with which the film is structured. Strand continues to celebrate in her brilliant, innovative personal documentaries her theme, the reaffirmation of the tough resilience of the human spirit.’ (Marsha Kinder, Film Quarterly)

Soft Fiction preserved by Pacific Film Archive in collaboration with Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles.

PROGRAMME NOTES