Amy Halpern

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. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2015.

Illusions of surface, abstract to pictorial. Initially the grain of the film emulsion, complete with scratches, variations in framing – the meat of film – are the most apparent elements of all. The object shown is revealed to be a bowl of canned peaches. But even with identification, the visual illusions return – e. g., a concave surface becomes convex, the flat bottom of the bowl becomes an egg.

Following Gage-like skull trauma, a woman’s body unravels in dissolving textures and neuronal visions.

Ancient alchemists believed that salamanders can be reborn from fire, like the phoenix or Christ. They do not survive fire, nor extreme dryness. And they cannot be resurrected after burning. (Amy Halpern)

A rhythmic montage of almost 200 faces, human and animals, that Halpern pans vertically, creating a cascade of visages suggesting that while individuals express a range of emotions they remain ultimately enigmas.