Chick Strand - Fruits of Love and Labour

Programme

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  Fake Fruit Factory

  Intimate documentary about young women who make papier mache fruit and vegetables in a small factory in Mexico. They have a gringo boss, but the factory is owned by his Mexican wife. The film focsues on the color, music, and the gossip revealing what the young women think about men.

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  Anselmo

  An experimental documentary in the sense that it is a symbolic reenactment of a real event. Strand asked a Mexican Indian friend what he would like most in the world. His answer was, “A double E flat tuba.”

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  Cosas de mi vida

  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.

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  Mujer de Milfuegos

  A kind of heretic fantasy film. An expressionistic, surrealistic portrait of a Latin American woman. Not a personal portrait so much as an evocation of the consciousness of women in rural parts of such countries as Spain, Greece and Mexico; women who wear black from the age 15 and spend their entire lives giving birth, preparing food and tending to household and farm responsibilities.