Chick Strand | 1979 | United States | 56’ | 16mm

Chick Strand studied anthropology and ethnographic film before becoming a filmmaker, and her work is frequently referred to in the context of these traditions, although her films were often deemed ‘non-academic’ and rejected from male-dominated intellectual circles. Her work deviates from a normative understanding of categories such as ethnographic (and perhaps categorisation in general) eschewing critical distance in favour of desire, texture, pain and movement.

Soft Fiction blends poetic documentary with lyrical abstraction, exploring the dynamic range of female sensuality. The camera spends time with five women, who talk about experiences which veer between the sensual and the traumatic, questioning hard distinctions between victimhood and pleasure, while capturing subtle nuances in facial expressions and gestures in a rare example of empathetic filmmaking.

This screening is organised in collaboration with WET: a Rotterdam-based production and distribution cooperative for experimental film and video, founded by Anna Łuczak, Erika Roux, Marta Hryniuk, Nick Thomas and Sophie Bates in 2018.