The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Author: DC (Page 30 of 1085)

Short histories of certain plastic enclosures

‘The modern lightweight shopping bag is the invention of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin. In the early 1960s, Thulin developed a method of forming a simple one-piece bag by folding, welding and die-cutting a flat tube of plastic for the packaging company Celloplast of Norrköping, Sweden. Thulin’s design produced a simple, strong bag with a high load-carrying capacity, and was patented worldwide by Celloplast in 1965.

‘Celloplast was a well-established producer of cellulose film and a pioneer in plastics processing. The company’s patent position gave it a virtual monopoly on plastic shopping bag production, and the company set up manufacturing plants across Europe and in the US. However, other companies saw the attraction of the bag, too, and the US petrochemicals group Mobil overturned Celloplast’s US patent in 1977.

‘In 1959 after the deaths of 80 babies and toddlers, suffocated by plastic dry-cleaning bags, California introduces a law to ban plastic dry cleaning bags. A spokesperson from the plastics industry “blamed parental carelessness in the deaths” and contrary to previous comments regarding reuse, argued that polyethylene film was “made and costed to be disposable.” The Society of the Plastics Industry, along with bag producers, resin companies and plastics processors drafted a Model Bill that preserved the existence of plastic garment bags in California. The net result is simply a printing requirement, providing a warning message, not a ban of the product. By 1996, 80% of grocery bags used were plastic.’ — bag monster.com

 

‘The history of plastic tubing is basically rooted in the Hula Hoop craze of the 1950s. That’s when two men named Robert Banks and Paul Hogan made a crucial discovery: crystalline polypropylene. Polyethylene is an inexpensive type of plastic material that’s extremely durable and chemical-resistant. Hogan and Banks discovered that ethylene could help to produce a similar type of plastic. Ethylene is Earth’s most prolifically produced type of organic compound.

‘However, actually producing plastic tubing was more challenging than you might expect. Even after the Phillips Petroleum Company had spent a small fortune to develop the plastic product’s manufacturing process, there was initially little demand for the resin product. That changed towards the end of the 1950s. Polyethylene became a crucial material for various products, such as liquid detergent bottles and baby bottles. Interestingly, the huge success of the Hula Hoop resulted in several new applications for polyethylene-including a new and exciting type of plastic tubing.’ — jbplasticbags.com

 

‘Joseph B. Friedman was sitting at his brother’s fountain parlor, the Varsity Sweet Shop, in the 1930s, watching his little daughter Judith fuss over a milkshake. She was drinking out of a paper straw. Since the straw was designed to be straight, little Judith was struggling to drink it up. Friedman had an idea. He brought a straw to his home, where he liked to tinker with inventions like “lighted pencils” and other newfangled writing equipment. The straw would be a simple tinker. A screw and some string would do.

‘Friedman inserted a screw into the straw toward the top. Then he wrapped dental floss around the paper, tracing grooves made by the inserted screw. Finally, he removed the screw, leaving a accordion-like ridge in the middle of the once-straight straw. Voila! he had created a straw that could bend around its grooves to reach a child’s face over the edge of a glass.

‘The modern bendy straw was born. The plastic would come later. The “crazy” straw — you know, the one that lets you watch the liquid ride a small roller coaster in plastic before reaching your mouth — would come later, too. But the the game-changing invention had been made. In 1939, Friedman founded Flex-Straw Company. By the 1940s, he was manufacturing flex-straws with his own custom-built machines. His first sale didn’t go to a restaurant, but rather to a hospital, where glass tubes still ruled. Nurses realized that bendy straws could help bed-ridden patients drink while lying down. Solving the “Judith problem” had created a multi-million dollar business.’ — The Atlantic

 

‘David S. Sheridan was the inventor of the modern disposable catheter in the 1940s. In his lifetime he started and sold four catheter companies and was dubbed the “Catheter King” by Forbes Magazine in 1988. He is also credited with the invention of the modern “disposable” plastic endotracheal tube now used routinely in surgery. Prior to his invention, red rubber tubes were used, sterilized, and then re-used, which had a high risk of infection and thus often led to the spread of disease. As a result Mr Sheridan is credited with saving thousands of lives.

‘In the early 1900s, a Dubliner named Walsh and a famous Scottish urinologist called Norman Gibbon teamed together to create the standard catheter used in hospitals today. Named after the two creators, it was called the Gibbon-Walsh catheter. The Gibbon and the Walsh catheters have been described and their advantages over other catheters shown. The Walsh catheter is particularly useful after prostatectomy for it drains the bladder without infection or clot retention. The Gibbon catheter has largely obviated the necessity of performing emergency prostatectomy. It is also very useful in cases of urethral fistula.’ — collaged

 

‘Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) was founded in Two Harbors in 1902. By 1920 the company had developed some of the best sandpapers in the world. When they put out a call for new engineers to join the company, Richard Drew wrote to ask for the job. Drew, then an engineering student, had been putting himself through school by playing the banjo in several Twin Cities dance bands. He was hired to take trial samples of 3M products to auto shops, which used the sandpaper to prepare cars for painting. While on a delivery in 1923, he noticed that the auto shops had a problem.

‘At the time, two-tone paint jobs were very popular. At the auto shops, Drew watched painters struggle to seal off areas for the two-color painting process. The tape that painters used either didn’t seal effectively or stuck so tightly that it peeled the paint. The tapes left gummy residue that ruined the car’s finish. After seeing the problem, Drew had the idea to create a new tape.

‘After presenting the idea to his supervisors, Drew was granted the use of a laboratory, where he experimented with different adhesives and backings. He eventually found an adhesive that sealed tightly while releasing cleanly. He applied it to a crepe paper backing, which gave the tape the ability to stretch and adapt to curves and contours. In 1925, 3M released Drew’s invention, the Scotch brand masking tape.’ — MNopedia

 

‘Plastics were used in clothing since its invention, particularly in raincoats. But PVC clothing became more noted in the 1960s and early 1970s fashion trend. The fashion designers of that era saw the PVC plastic as the ideal material to design futuristic clothes. During that era, boots, raincoats, dresses and other PVC garments were made in many colors and even transparent and worn in public areas to some degrees. At that time it was also common to see PVC clothes on films and TV series such as The Avengers, for example. And since then these shiny plastic clothes became a fetish object.

‘In mid 1990s, clothes made of PVC have been prevalent in young people’s fashions, particularly in jackets, skirts and trousers, also appearing in the media. During the mid-1990s it was common to see presenters, models, actresses, actors, singers and other celebrities wearing PVC clothes on TV and magazines. As fashions come round and round again, it would seem that PVC are appearing again in mainstream street fashions as well as continuing to be central to the fetish scene.’ — PVC.com

 

‘The Plastic car was a car build with agricultural plastic and was fueled with hemp combustible (oil or ethanol). Although the formula used to create the plasticized panels has been lost, it is conjectured that the first iteration of the body was made partially from soybeans and Hemp. The body was lighter and therefore more fuel efficient than a normal metal body. It was made by Henry Ford’s auto company in Dearborn, Michigan, and was introduced to public view on August 13, 1941.

‘Henry Ford gave the project to the Soybean Laboratory in Greenfield Village. The person in charge there was Lowell Overly, who had a background in tool and die design. The finished prototype was exhibited in 1941 at the Dearborn Days festival in Dearborn, Michigan. It was also shown at the Michigan State Fair Grounds the same year. Patent 2,269,452 for the chassis of the soybean car was issued January 13, 1942. Because of World War II all US automobile production was curtailed considerably, and the plastic car experiment basically came to a halt. By the end of the war the plastic car idea went into oblivion. According to Lowell Overly, the prototype car was destroyed by Bob Gregorie.

‘Others argue that Ford invested millions of dollars into research to develop the plastic car to no avail. He proclaimed he would “grow automobiles from the soil” — however it never happened, even though he had over 12,000 acres of soybeans for experimentation. Some sources even say the Soybean Car wasn’t made from soybeans at all — but of phenolic plastic, an extract of coal tar. One newspaper even reports that all of Ford’s research only provided whipped cream as a final product.’ – collaged

 

‘The moment the modern plastic beverage bottle changed the world’s drinking habits is difficult to pinpoint. The day New York supermodels began carrying tall bottles of Evian water as an accessory on fashion show catwalks in the late 1980s surely signaled the future ahead. Billions of bottles were sold on the promise that bottled water is good for hair and skin, healthier than soft drinks and safer than tap water. And it didn’t take consumers long to buy into the notion that they needed water within reach virtually everywhere they went.

‘What sets bottles apart from other plastic products born in the post-World War II rise of consumerism is the sheer speed with which the beverage bottle, now ubiquitous around the world, has shifted from convenience to curse. The transition played out in a single generation.

‘“The plastic bottle transformed the beverage industry and it changed our habits in many ways,” says Peter Gleick, author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water. “We’ve become a society that seems to think if we don’t have water at hand, terrible things will happen. It’s kind of silly. It’s not as though anybody died from thirst in the old days,” he says.’ — Laura Parker

 

‘When I was 7 years old, I was Chewbacca for Halloween. The body of the costume was made out of a sheet of plastic, the kind that went “whoosh, whoosh” when you walked. It looked like a garbage bag. On it was a picture of Chewie’s head with “Star Wars” emblazoned above it, in case you didn’t recognize the Wookiee and what movie he was from. The mask—a thin, brittle piece of plastic—had two eyehole cutouts, two small nose-holes and a slight mouth slit for easy breathing. Only, it wasn’t easy to breathe when wearing that mask. And I had a hard time fitting it over my thick, plastic-framed glasses because the thin white elastic that held it in place would break every other time I put it on. And once I did, my glasses would steam up from the massive amount of sweat my body was producing from the costume.

‘Ben Cooper, the son of a restaurant owner who became a costume impresario, didn’t invent the Halloween costume. But he and his company awakened generations of kids to the potential of what Halloween could be. Ben Cooper wasn’t the first company to manufacture Halloween costumes, nor was it the first to license Hollywood creations for the costume-buying public. But Ben Cooper had an advantage: The company excelled at getting licenses to characters before they became popular and, in a lot of cases, before anyone else. Consider one of its first purchases, in 1937: Snow White, from a little company called Walt Disney.

‘It wasn’t until after World War II, however, that Halloween costume manufacturing became big business. With the rise of television in the 1950s and the popularity of TV shows such as The Adventures of Superman, Zorro, and Davy Crockett, Ben Cooper obtained the licenses to many of these live-action shows and began mass producing inexpensive representations of them in costume form for less than $3 each, which amounts to about 12 bucks these days. The company distinguished itself with speed: It would rapidly buy rights, produce costumes and get them onto store shelves, which opened a whole new world of costuming to children.

‘Ben Cooper’s heyday didn’t last forever. The company filed for bankruptcy twice due to lagging sales, relocation expenses, and the early 1990s recession. But it was new rivals that probably did the most damage to Ben Cooper ’s business, selling high-quality latex masks and more realistic costumes. One of those competitors was Rubie’s Costume Company, which eventually bought Ben Cooper and dissolved it.’ — Charles Moss, Slate

 

‘The first inflatable structure was designed in 1959 by John Scurlock in Shreveport, Louisiana who was experimenting with inflatable covers for tennis courts when he noticed his employees enjoyed jumping on the covers. He was a mechanical engineer and liked physics. Scurlock was a pioneer of inflatable domes, inflatable tents, inflatable signs and his greatest achievement was the invention of the safety air cushion that is used by fire and rescue departments to catch people jumping from buildings or heights.

‘The first space walk manufacturing company was in New Orleans in a leased warehouse that also sewed horse pads. His wife, Frances, started the first inflatable rental company in 1968 and in 1976 they built a custom facility for the production and rental of the products. They marketed the space walks to children’s events such as birthday parties, school fairs and company picnics. These original inflatables did not have the enclosure of today’s inflatables, creating a safety hazard.

‘Their son Frank Scurlock expanded their rental concept throughout the United States under the brand names “Space Walk” and “Inflatable Zoo”. Frank also founded the first all inflatable indoor play park called “Fun Factory” on Thanksgiving Day 1986 in Metairie, Louisiana. A second unit was opened in Memphis Tennessee called “Fun Plex” in 1987. Both locations closed after the value of the property became too great for the operations. The first inflatable was an open top mattress with no sides, called a “Space Pillow”. In 1967 a pressurized inflatable top was added, it required two fans and got hot in the summer like a greenhouse. That version was called “Space Walk” and was adopted as the company name.

‘In 1974, to solve the heat problem, a new product line called “Jupiter Jump” was created that has inflated columns that supported netting walls which allowed the air to pass through. Further enhancements of this style were developed until, in the early 1990s, the first entirely enclosed inflatable structure, built to resemble a fairytale castle, appeared on the market and proved immensely popular. Bouncy Castles, as they’re now popularly known, no longer need to physically resemble a castle to warrant the moniker.’ — collaged

 

Plastic surgery is a surgical specialty involving the restoration, reconstruction, or alteration of the human body. It can be divided into two main categories: reconstructive surgery and cosmetic surgery. Reconstructive surgery covers a wide range of specialties, including craniofacial surgery, hand surgery, microsurgery, and the treatment of burns. This category of surgery focuses on restoring a body part or improving its function. In contrast, cosmetic (or aesthetic) surgery focuses solely on improving the physical appearance of the body. A comprehensive definition of plastic surgery has never been established, because it has no distinct anatomical object and thus overlaps with practically all other surgical specialties. An essential feature of plastic surgery is that it involves the treatment of conditions that require or may require tissue relocation skills.

‘The word plastic in plastic surgery is in reference to the concept of “reshaping” and comes from the Greek πλαστική (τέχνη), plastikē (tekhnē), “the art of modelling” of malleable flesh. This meaning in English is seen as early as 1598. In the surgical context, the word “plastic” first appeared in 1816 and was established in 1838 by Eduard Zeis, preceding the modern technical usage of the word as “engineering material made from petroleum” by 70 years.

‘Treatments for the plastic repair of a broken nose are first mentioned in the c. 1600 BC Egyptian medical text called the Edwin Smith papyrus. The early trauma surgery textbook was named after the American Egyptologist, Edwin Smith.Reconstructive surgery techniques were being carried out in India by 800 BC. Sushruta was a physician who made contributions to the field of plastic and cataract surgery in the 6th century BC.

‘The Roman scholar Aulus Cornelius Celsus recorded surgical techniques, including plastic surgery, in the 1st century AD. The Romans also performed plastic cosmetic surgery, using simple techniques, such as repairing damaged ears, from around the 1st century BC. For religious reasons, they did not dissect either human beings or animals, thus, their knowledge was based in its entirety on the texts of their Greek predecessors. Notwithstanding, Aulus Cornelius Celsus left some accurate anatomical descriptions, some of which—for instance, his studies on the genitalia and the skeleton—are of special interest to plastic surgery.’ — American Society of Plastic Surgeons

 

Plus

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Steeqhen, It’s true, sometimes when I’m sick my dreams will hang around in my brain for a while. I guess the transition from sleep to awake is smoother in that case? The much hated (from me) ‘The Lighthouse’ was kind of like that too: a clunky play about masculinity wedged inside an overwrought gloom style fest. I vote for writing that piece. You seemed creatively fraught, which can work wonders. ** Misanthrope, So sorry, George. Let me know how it goes. ** jay, Hey, j. So happy her work insinuated itself. Yeah, it’s true, it’s interesting to be around the altered. You’re right. And excellent that you liked ‘Suicide’. You may know this, but Edouard finished the novel, delivered it to his publisher, then went home and killed himself. He shared my French publisher, Editions POL, and I knew him a little. Intense guy. Obviously. Huge island resort sounds nice. I’m in Peach’s castle, the last level of my game, preparing for and dreading my upcoming battle with the big boss, a giant stapler. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yeah, her work isn’t very well known in recent times, for the reasons I kvetched about at the p.s.’s end. Films that aren’t angling to be viral sensations are orphaned in this current state of pro-popular anti-serious culture. In the US, I mean. Ah, you’re reading Damien’s novel. I wonder how he is. He still dips in here sometimes. Let’s be very thankful for our things. Ha. Love is a battlefield, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you so much for looking at her work. Mission accomplished. Promising, fingers crossed news there about your Leeds dudes. ** James, Hi. Well, most of the filmmakers I feature here made their films in a world where that kind of work was more prized, and most of them weren’t that prolific, it just seems so when you stack all their works up in retrospect. You’ll have plenty of time to get up to experimental things in the future when school is dust. Your metalhead friends are more mainstream-y types of metalheads, like Judas Priest and maybe Deftones when they’re feeling edgy and all that stuff? Ah, I quite like ‘Dauði Baldr’, I don’t think it’s shitty whatsoever. The UK has a pretty fair number of escorts. They seem to thrive there. But what the UK really has is an inordinately vast number of slaves. In my searching, I would say the UK has the largest slave population in the world, with Germany a semi-close second. Why? You tell me. My to-do list … work on/finish the script for Zac’s and my new film, try to get some fiction going,  go to Efteling, … etc. If you pay close attention to the blog, and I know you do, you know what my obsessions are, just not how obsessive I am about them because I’m a nice guy who spares you. So many lonely people out there. It’s sad. I never get lonely, I don’t think. It’s weird. So, were you up late? ** Steve, Thanks! Yeah, she’s a bit in the background these days. But with a catchy name like Chick Strand, that can’t last forever. Everyone, Steve christens the new year with his first 2025 review, on the film ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT, and it’s on the arts fuse site aka here. ** Lucas, Sorry the cutting cigs thing didn’t work. But you’ll kick it. Definitely best to quit smoking as young as possible. The filthier your lungs, the more they fight back. Now that’s an intense dream, you are absolutely right. Makes me glad that mine vanish with the opening of my eyes. Quite colorful, though. That makes sense, yes, and I hope you’ll write that if the idea stays itchy. I’m actually not very good at non-fiction writing, so I don’t know. Start by kind of following the leads of, say, Meinhof and Indiana, not worrying about being imitative, and soon enough your own voice will eat the influences. I think that’s how it works? Have the best time making the last holiday days matter. Sounds like you will. ** Darby*ੈ🎡‧₊˚, Ooh, a consolidated Darby-adjacent Fete Foraine! Slobberhouse, nice name. Sounds fun even from the title’s outset. Uh, presumably I will be doing some travelling for screenings of our film, but all of that is yet to be determined. My fingers are extremely crossed regarding your strength and resilience. And your tofu too. Did they help? I don’t believe in God, no. Not even for a second. Not even when inexplicable things happen. I sometimes sort of believe in karma, but not very often. Vampa Museum, no. I’ll scope it out. There’s a vampire museum in Paris, but I hear it’s pretty tiny and unconvincing. I wish you immense luck with your writing. Immense. Did that help? You sounded like you were primed. Yes, yes indeed, I would truly love it if you want to make a Louis Wain post. Yes, please, and thank you ultra-much for wanting to. ** Måns BT, Jour béni, Måns. Oh, man, okay, it does sound like you should have taken my advice. Yikes. What in the world did you party with? Surely your parents won’t revise their general opinion of your upstanding personhood based on one evening of indulgence. I don’t know your parents though, obviously. But … you can still find a way to meet her, no? If she likse ‘The Sluts’, surely just telling her you were zonked that night won’t dissuade her. I am an optimist, but that also seems logical. My 2025 has been such a non-event so far that I’m not sure what it means. I wish you all the best too. I feel certain that 2025 will sweep you off your feet in the good way. ** HaRpEr, Ah. I was a shitty shoplifter. I only did it three times and got caught two times. The only time I didn’t get caught I was stealing a gay porn magazine, so I guess luck was on my side in some respect. I have a friend who shoplifts every single time he goes in any store. When I go in a store with him, I pretend I don’t know him. But he says he has never been caught, and he’s in his 20s and says he has been shoplifting multiple times a day since was a 7 years old. Nice: new year, visibly new you. That’s a way to freshen things up. Aw, I’m glad my little outburst had at least a single instance of persuasiveness and that it was you. ** Arla, Hi, Arla! Happiest first portion of 2025 to you! Wow, you wrote about her. That’s very, very cool. Uh, I’m just a really curious person, and, for whatever reason, I get very industrious when I’m curious. Just dumb luck, I guess. What’s the lengthy essay about? Or, you don’t have to tell me if vocalising it makes the bricking worse. Really good to see you! ** Justin D, Hi, Justin. Yes, GbV’s gigantic body of work unfortunately has a counteracting effect on those who don’t really know them and want to try. Great about ‘It’s Not Me’. Dizzying is a good characterisation. Especially in combo with inspiring. I do know re: time’s inconsequentiality (that’s not a word, says my Spellcheck?) circa now. But it’s already the 3rd, so time to battle. ** Tyler Ookami, Thank you, thank you, for the links. Really helpful. I’m getting a little mildly fixated. ‘Furloid’, wow, that’s really exciting. I’m so on it. Boy, thank you for confirming all my worst fears, or, well, not fears, more disinterested expectations, I guess, about ‘Nosferatu’. Blah. ‘Flow’? No, I don’t know it. Wow, it sounds really, really interesting. Criterion doesn’t work in France, grr, but I’ll find it somehow. Thank you, Tyler, that sounds like exactly what I would like to investigate right now. I hope all’s great on your side. ** Cletus, Cool, very happy that her work intrigued you. Her work needs all the new fans it can get these days. You interviewed rodeo parents? That’s fascinating. Both the actual opportunity and what it uncovered too. Wow, nice. Thank you for the chapbook. I definitely look forward to reading it ASAP. ** Okay. Today you can learn a little about the histories behind a handful of plastic enclosures if you so choose. See you tomorrow.

Chick Strand’s Day

 

‘Sensuous, deeply felt, rigorous, uncompromising – the work of Chick Strand belongs in the canon of avant-garde cinema alongside that of her contemporaries Stan Brakhage and Bruces Baillie and Conner. Thanks to a spate of recent restorations by the Pacific and Academy film archives, they may slowly be getting their due.

‘Co-founder with Baillie of Canyon Cinema in 1961, Strand helped create an audience for experimental filmmakers, which she continued over 24 years as a professor in Los Angeles, bending and expanding minds with the manifold potentials of cinematic form. Her own mastery of poetic abstraction, found footage and lyrical ethnography make her filmography one of the most dynamic and distinctive of an era.

‘A student of anthropology who went on to study ethnographic film, Strand is most often associated with her work documenting the people she encountered in Mexico, in and around the town of San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato. For years she spent her summers there, always with a 16mm camera in hand: Cosas de Mi Vida (1976), Fake Fruit Factory (1986) and Señora con Flores (1995/2011) are only a handful of the many portraits she created before her death in 2009.

‘Many of them focused on the everyday lives of women. The 1970 film Mosori Monika, which considers the relationship between missionaries and native Waraos in Venezuela, exemplifies Strand’s signature style: caressing movements and features in close-up, pulling viewers in by the lapels with a telescoped lens, incorporating the subject’s thoughts via voiceover narration.

‘Perhaps the most radical is Artificial Paradise (1986), an ecstatic rapture of glimpses and textures that dares to express, as she has written, “the anthropologist’s most human desire.” The intimacy of her gaze wants to collapse the distance between filmmaker and subject, outsider and native – in true avant-garde fashion, to recast the document as ‘of’ rather than ‘about’. The result is a relentless, deeply absorbing visual encounter that must be experienced to be understood.

‘Perhaps this unapologetic subjectivity played a part in keeping Strand’s work from embrace within visual anthropology circles – although practitioners like Robert Gardner and John Marshall managed to push notions of the genre from within. (She also felt a strong sense of duty to access and interpret the female experience across cultures, something underrepresented in the male-dominated anthropological work of the early 1970s.) Still, the breadth of Strand’s interests went well beyond ethnography, into film language and experimental technique.

‘When she moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA, Strand met Pat O’Neill, who encouraged her interest in film stocks and showed her how to solarise film as well as operate an optical printer. Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966) and Waterfall (1967) are early examples of her experimentation with these tools and techniques. The former is a layered poem of landscape, creatures and natural light with a jazz inflected soundtrack; the latter a deftly synthesised reverie of figure skaters, retriever dogs, church towers and Busby Berkeley mass ornament.

‘Also assembled from appropriated materials are the later works Cartoon le Mousse (1979) and Loose Ends (1979), both decidedly poignant if darker visions of suffering and the human condition. These films succeed in absorbing the viewer into their own universe of keen and unsettling association, dry wit and devastation.

‘The intensity of Strand’s oeuvre finds its breath in films like Kristallnacht and Fever Dream (both 1979), each a sustained meditation on reflected light. But where Kristallnacht hovers over rippling water, with drips and sprays in luminous black and white, Fever Dream insists on the body, all skin and sensuality. They give you the distinct sense of Strand’s voice distilled: the intimacy of physical experience married to light and movement; the essence of vision, the essence of cinema.

‘Describing ethnographic filmmaking, Strand once wrote: “It is a means to get into other perspectives of the culture, to meet them, and to identify with them as fellow human beings.” Her diverse output is permeated by this profound sense of humanity, of film as a tool for identification and relation, transcending time and culture. Strand, who preferred intuition to analysis, would agree: stop reading. See the films.’ — Vera Brunner-Sung, Sight & Sound

 

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Stills





































 

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Further

Chick Strand @ The Film-Makers Cooperative
‘Chick Strand: Loose Notes’
‘U of M Students Respond to Chick Strand: In Retrospect’
‘Divining spirits: Chick Strand’
‘Soft Fiction and Kristallnacht: An Interview with Irina Leimbacher’
‘Chick Strand, Señora con Flores’
‘Tags: Chick Strand’ @ Experimental Cinema
‘Remembering Chick Strand’
‘Chick Strand at 75’
‘Who’s Chick Strand?’
Steve Polta on Chick Strand
‘Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear: Fake Fruit Factory’
‘THE JOY OF AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE’
‘Last Strand’
‘Chick Strand: Now They Call it “Avant-Garde”‘
‘Goodbye, Chick Strand’

 

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Extras


CHICK STRAND DOCUMENT


“Marmor”, a found footage video using film material of Chick Strand

 

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Audio Interview 2008.02.25

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Quotes

 

“I have no idea what my films mean when I’m doing them. That is boring to me to figure out…If I knew what the meaning was, there would be no reason to do it.”

“Other people love to work with a script and the whole thing but not me…”

“[Soft Fiction] is a film about women who win…What I mean by winning is that they don’t become victims, and they don’t become survivors. They carry on. They take the responsibility for having had the experience and carrying it off and dealing with it and carrying on and becoming more potent, more powerful, more of themselves.”

“The end one, Hedy, means it is never trivial. It is all going to get us in the heart and the gut. She just comes to a blank when she gets to that hill where bad things are going on. She gets to a blank. She’s had a hard time, obviously. And that was the first time that she told the story to anyone….in a sense the film itself acted as an exorcism for some of these things. These stories are what the women told me….”

“I make films. I don’t make films for a living. It’s out of pocket most of the time. And I damn well do what I want. I have no responsibility to the Women’s movement, to liberal politics, to international workers of the world, or to anything or to any political correctness, none at all. I’d be bored. It’s all going to come out. Let the people speak for themselves, the incidents speak for themselves. When I first started showing Soft Fiction, I’d get shit from some feminists as if I wasn’t supposed to show it—as if I was supposed to lie about it somehow.”

“All of us experimental filmmakers are in the hole—the guys and the women, too. We’re the last anybody ever thinks about and the first to go. But then our own boys don’t pay any attention to us. Well, they do but…that’s pretty hard. But that’s okay, because the biggest hole is experimental film…We’re all in it as experimental filmmakers. So that’s the part of me that ends up going to these shows and speaking—just in case one or two people might be interested enough to pay the fee to get in and keep things going.”

“I shoot documentary style…And Soft Fiction, no. I don’t know to this day whether one person’s story is true or not. I mean, it has to do with memory. I am much more interested in how it is related to Alain Resnais—to Last Year at Marienbad (1961)—than I am interested in whether it is related to Salesman (Albert and David Maysles, 1969).”

“I like a lot of movement. I like to make my own special effects. I like to put the viewer in a position they would never be in: really close in, for a length of time, like they’re flitting around the feet of the dancers.””

 

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10 of Chick Strand’s 18 films

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Anselmo (1967)
‘Strand spent over twenty years documenting her friend Anselmo Aguascalientes’ life, eventually creating a stunning trilogy of films—Anselmo, Cosas de mi vida, and Anselmo and the Women—tender portraits that are also glimpses into poverty, resourcefulness, perseverance and patriarchy.’ — letterboxd

 

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Mosori Monika (1970)
‘ Mosori Monika considers the relationship between missionaries and native Waraos in Venezuela, exemplifies Strand’s signature style: caressing movements and features in close-up, pulling viewers in by the lapels with a telescoped lens, incorporating the subject’s thoughts via voiceover narration.’ — bfi

 

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Elasticity (1975)
‘Impressionistic surrealism in three acts. The approach is literary experimental with optical effects. There are three mental states that are interesting: amnesia, euphoria and ecstasy. Amnesia is not knowing who you are and wanting desperately to know. I call this the White Night. Euphoria is not knowing who you are and not caring. This is the Dream of Meditation. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who you are and still not caring. I call this the Memory of the Future.’ — C.S.


the entire film

 

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Cosas de mi vida (1976)
‘Expressive documentary in an ethnographic approach about Anselmo, a Mexican Indian. It is a film about his struggle for survival in the Third World. Orphaned at age 7, he was the sole support of himself and his baby sister, who eventually starved and died in his arms. The film continues with Anselmo’s struggle to live and to do something with his life other than a docile acceptance of poverty. Totally uneducated in a formal way, he taught himself how to play a horn and when he became a man he started his own street band. The film was started in 1965 and finished in 1975. During the 10 years, I saw the physical change in Anselmo’s life in terms of things he could buy to make his family at first able to survive, and during the last years, to make them more comfortable. I felt a change in his spirit from a proud, individualistic and graceful man into one obsessed with possessions and role playing in order to get ahead and stay on top, but one cannot help but admire his energy and determination to succeed, to drag himself and is family out of the hopelessness and sameness of poverty to give them a future. Anselmo tells his own story in English although he does not speak the language. After he told me of his life in Spanish, I translated it into English and taught him how to say it.’ — C.S.

Watch the film here

 

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Loose Ends (1979)
‘LOOSE ENDS is a collage film about the process of internalizing the information that bombards us through a combination of personal experience and media in all forms. Speeding through our senses in ever-increasing numbers and complicated mixtures of fantasy, dream and reality from both outside and in, these fragmented images of life, sometimes shared by all, sometimes isolated and obscure, but with common threads, lead us to a state of psychological entropy tending toward a uniform inertness … an insensitive uninvolvement in the human condition and our own humanity.’ — Filmmakers Coop


the entire film

 

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Soft Fiction (1979)
‘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.’ — collaged


the entire film


Irina Leimbacher talks about “Soft Fiction”

 

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Kristallnacht (1979)
‘”Kristallnacht” is so abstract that any connection to the Holocaust beyond the film’s title and dedication can be seen as deeply seeded if not entirely non-existent. I don’t consider that a complaint even if it sounds that way. If anything, this is less about the images evoking meaning on the surface and more about the context deciding the meaning of its images. Light on water, silhouettes of faces, a naturalistic mostly environmental score – so so minimal, yet placed underneath the inescapable implication of death.’ — Puffin

Watch the film here

 

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Fake Fruit Factory (1986)
‘ I discovered this particular piece after it being mentioned as one of the National Film Registry’s 2011 list of 25 culturally significant films. Before actually viewing the film I was surprised by its inclusion given that it is only a twenty minute documentary about a group of Mexican women making fake fruit. Upon beginning my viewing of the film though I realized it was something far grander and more realized than simply documenting an unusual type of employment. What Chick Strand creates in her brief documentary is an ethereal study of human existence as seen through the lives of a few under-appreciated and blatantly exploited women. Unlike other fly on the wall documentaries, Strand offers you no explanation as to what you are watching besides an occasional title card of explanation, you are left to glean from the film what is shown and what is said by the works, most of which is referencing the sexual exploits of the women. This approach makes considerable sense given Strand’s close ties to the ethnography program that existed at UCLA in the 1970’s. What Fake Fruit Factory becomes through Strand’s vision is a concise narrative essay on a few women who are being exploited by an often faceless white man, who only desires their craftiness and, at times, exotic bodies. We as viewers fear the worst when we realize that there is little these women can do to escape, until we are shown the women enjoying a picnic and swimming at an unknown park. This brief moment reminds viewers that life is not about the products we create or those things we can quantify, but instead the always fleeting moments of quality which toss and turn like agitated waters. Chick Strand offers something different and proves how integral experimentation in film has become to the grander evolution of cinema.’ — Travis Wagner


Excerpt


the entire film

 

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Coming Up for Air (1986)
‘A “new narrative” film based on the visions of magic realism in an Anglo context. This is a gothic mystery that explores a reckless pursuit of interchangeable personalities and experience. Whether experience is first hand, read, remembered from a conversation during a chance encounter, heard of from all possible sources of information, whether fact or fiction, the “experiences” become ours; reinterpreted, reconstructed, and restructured, finally becoming our personal myths, and the source of our poetry and dreams. The sources for this film include night dreams, the idea of holocaust, the exoticness of the Mid-East, the sensuality of animals, the explorations of Scott in Antarctica, and a film I once saw, entitled The Son of Amir Is Dead.’ — Chick Strand


the entire film

 

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Wild Rumpus (2008)
‘A pastiche by Chick Strand built out of footage from Where the Wild Things Are.’ — dustincollins


the entire film

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Black Metal is very stylin’. Eek, I had measles as an adult when I was living in Amsterdam, and it was really rough. It took my immune system more than a year to work properly again. Avoid the possibility at all costs. ** Darby𓃱𓃱$$$, Giddy, sweet. ‘Freak Toons’, no, I don’t, but I will check with my most zine-savvy associates and pursue post-haste. If I find it, you’ll know. Thanks! Awesome about your New Year! Thank you about the mouse. I saw it just in the nick of time. ** jay, HNY to you! Gosh, maybe I’ll actually give celebrating the change of years a shot, but I don’t like drinking, and I’m basically post-druggie, so it might be a real challenge. It’s very rare that studio porn these days isn’t just boxy and old fashioned. A dying breed, I think. I’m one of those persons who can’t watch or read or listen to anything, even porn, without immediately deconstructing it formally and trying to figure out how it works, or, in porn’s case, putting aside its cast members and assessing how it gave me a boner our didn’t. I think they call people like me geeks. How nice that the slaves post did extracurricular duty, and successfully. Thanks for passing that along. Good luck making your New Years fun a mere twinkle in your year’s eye. Eye? Or something. ** Steeqhen, I never remember my dreams so I’m envying the clarity and narrative properties of yours. 30 is wholly doable. I don’t know how many books I read yearly, but it’s quite a bunch. For me, yoga worked pretty well, if memory serves, but not well enough. That said, I don’t remember anything about doing it what that felt like. So, who knows. Much luck on the throat/cough upswinging. ** Dominik, Hi!!! You’re back!!! Good, good that you only had 8.5 lousy hours since we last spoke. My holidays were very lowkey, Kind of a blur. This year has started without an untoward incident thus far. Black Metal can be very good at kind of scrubbing you out, clearing the mental decks and all of that. Like a deep cleaning. Thank you putting my thing on your list of favorite things! Your thing was on my list of favorite things too. Fist bump. Love’s not a girl who misses much, G. ** James, Ridiculous, poorly recorded things are a problem? Since when? HNY to you! There is quite a lot of grunt work involved in finding slaves who are interesting/ amusing/ tragic enough to present to you all, so I’ll accept a smidgen of your compliment, thank you. No, I think you have to write that Burroughsian novel, as far as I can tell. Ultimately, as something of a news junkie, not to mention a devourer of every fact-based tidbit about my various obsessions, I definitely read more non-fiction than fiction, but when non-fiction is in a book, I do fight off feeling like ‘Get that rabble out of the sacred object!’. You’re lucky to have the brother you have, trust me. That guy you chatted with sounds like a total warning sign. Glad he couldn’t keep himself from warning you. Luck with the short story. Nose to the grindstone, as they say, and whatever the hell that means. ** Cletus, HNY to you and yours! Cool. I once tried to interview a Black Metal musician as part of my research for the text portion of a theater piece Gisele Vienne were making, but every time I asked him a question he just glowered at me and rolled his eyes, so that didn’t help. Or, well, it did, I guess. ** Misanthrope, Well, next time, man. There’s always a next time. Ugh, re: David’s state. I think you have to cut him off. He’ll probably lose his shit, but he needs to lose his shit. Man, so much luck to you on that. Poor David. I so really hope he gets his shit together. ** Tyler Ookami, Hi. I did do an early search on the furry bands/music, and it does look pretty healthy and interesting. I’m just waiting to see if it’s enough to make a blog post about at the moment. Thanks! ** Steve, In my experience of late, most of the people I’ve met who are big readers of fiction and/or poetry have either been female, trans, or young queer guys. I have to wait for the venue hosting the premiere to announce before I can. I’m not sure when that will be. I don’t believe the venue has a competition. It’s an exciting, logistically smaller, relatively new festival. ** Steven Purtill, Hey, man! I’m glad you saw that I re-upped it! It’s still fresh as a daisy. HNY to you! I hope everything in your world is progressing greatly! ** HaRpEr, The Schuyler novel is really lovely. Very him. Calder is so great. There was a time when every book I read was either a Calder or Grove book. Did you ever get caught shoplifting? I did twice, but I was still young enough at the time, maybe 13 or 14, that my crocodile tears got me scoldings and not the cops. As a thrower of myself into work type of person, I don’t need to tell you which side of that argument I’m on. Throw. ** Dev, Hi. It does feel like the Cloudflare monster is weakening, but I don’t know if that’s technically true. Anyway, hey! Thanks for knocking twice. FUMES by Miccaeli: cool, I just bookmarked it. I do sorely need to enter the minds of people who think complexly about smells. ’19-69′ … I do know what cocaine smells like, I’ll try to find it and give it a whirl. Thanks, pal. I’m guessing Oxford, MS was named after Oxford, UK and now I am wondering why. Nothing against non-fiction at all, at least from me. I do think it’s interesting that most readers would rather have factual material to use their imaginations on rather than pre-imagined non-truthful writing to build upon. Wow, yeah, our birthdays are next door neighbors! Thats crazy. Uh, I want to go to my favorite amusement park Efteling, but I won’t be going on my actual birthday. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Traditionally my friends and I always went to the Hard Rock Cafe to eat nachos, but Hard Rock Cafe shut down permanently last month, so I’m a bit lost. You’ll be studying so hard you can’t even go outdoor a birthday dinner on your big day?! Hats off to your dutifulness, man. Well, at least eat something completely amazing on Friday. ** Justin D, Hey, JD. Oh, wow, choosing a favorite GbV song is very, very, very hard given their endless supply of song masterpieces. At one point I decided that ‘Red Men and Their Wives’ was my favorite by them, so it’s possible it still would be, but don’t hold me to that. What’s yours? Every day I curse the forces that do not allow us in France to access The Criterion Channel. My first day of 2025 was okay. I saw a visiting friend. I progressed in my video game. The price of cigarettes went up one euro per pack and that wasn’t so great. That’s kind if it. How was your second day of 2025? ** Okay. Today I present to you the work of another very interesting filmmaker that you may not be familiar with due to the ridiculous conservatism of current day film critics and distributors and streaming platforms. So, in that sense, today is a possibly rare opportunity to say, ‘Fuck the boring, mainstream self-appointed culture-arbitrating powers that be, I’m going to discover films based on their uniqueness and daring, and here’s one of my chances.’ Or you could just scroll down rapidly. It’s a free country. It’s all good. Maybe. See you tomorrow.

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