Pioneering filmmaker remembered with retrospective
http://www.thedailynewsonline.com/articles/2010/03/30/entertainment/doc4bb0fe2ddf02c727609365.txt
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
BUFFALO -- Squeaky Wheel, 712 Main St., will screen select works by
filmmaker Chick Strand, who pioneered experimental non-fiction
ehtnographic film, at 8 p.m. Friday.
"Subjective States and Magical Non-Fictions" celebrates the life of
the Canyon Cinema co-founder who was 78 years old when she died from
cancer in summer 2009. The program features four of Strand's films,
including "Kristallnacht," "Cartoon le Mousse," "Elasticity" and
"Mujer de Milfuegos."
Strand's work evokes poetic and magical visions carefully constructed
from found footage and her own intimate cinematography. Pablo de
Ocampo wrote in an essay for the Portland (Ore.) Mercury
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=24537&category=22133
that Strand's work has "...changed the way we understand non-fiction
form...Strand laid the groundwork for the acceptance of the
experimental and the personal in a field previously dominated by
Margaret Mead and Robert Flaherty".
Strand, nicknamed Chick by her father, studied anthropology at
Berkeley in the 1960s, joined the free speech movement, and
experimented with photographic collage. She joined the filmmaker
Bruce Baillie and editor Ernest Callenbach to found Canyon Cinema, a
screening collective that evolved into the San Francisco Cinematheque
and the independent distributor Canyon Cinema. She enrolled in the
ethnography program at UCLA, and after graduating in 1971 taught for
24 years at Occidental College. She made 19 films, many shot in
Mexico, while traveling with her life and creative partner, the
pop-surrealist artist Neon Park (Martin Muller, 1940-93). Her work is
held in the collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences and continues to be distributed by Canyon Cinema.
"Chick Strand, through her example, always championed the rights of
filmmakers," Dominic Angerame, executive director of San Francisco,
Calif.-based Canyon Cinema, writes on the film distributor's Web
site. http://www.canyoncinema.com/contents.html
"She constantly insisted that filmmakers be paid for showing their
work and that they be treated properly. The spirit of Canyon Cinema
comes from her energies and she also believed that filmmakers should
organize and operate their own exhibitions and distribution of films.
Not only was she an inspiration to those of us involved in Canyon
Cinema, she was also a dedicated teacher for more than 35 years"
Holly Willis, writing in a blog for KCET, recalled her first meeting
with Strand around 1999, "when I tracked her down in the hills of
Tujunga in order to write a profile. After wrestling unsuccessfully
with her giant German Shepherd, who knocked me over repeatedly, I
still tried to conduct a proper interview, but I'd frankly never met
anyone like Strand -- she was by turns cranky, irreverent, bossy,
outrageous and, like the effusive dog, generously affectionate and, I
would learn over time, utterly passionate about her art.
Following the screening, film theorist and author of "Canyon Cinema:
The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor," Scott
MacDonald will speak via Skype about Strand's influential work and
about her role as a co-founder of the independent film screening
collective, Canyon Cinema.
Admission is $6 for non-members, $4 for members. For more
information, call (716) 884-7172 or go to www.squeaky.org.
.
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