IFI & AEMI Projections: Soft Fiction & And Under That, Chick Strand and Anne-Marie Copestake

A screening of the films Soft Fiction and And Under That introduced by the director of LUX, Benjamin Cook and Anne-Marie Copestake. Following the screening a public discussion was held at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, marking the re-launch of Dublin’s Critical Forum. The discussion considered aspects of both films including female experience and narrative, community and filmmaker relationships to their subjects, the particular narratives of the women featured in Soft Fiction and And Under That, as well as the legacy of film-maker Chick Strand. Anne-Marie outlined her process of research and script development and discussed her working methods for the film, its soundtrack, and ideas for film presentations reflecting the films main themes. Chick Strand’s film Soft Fiction is a remarkable work of collective representation. Each of the five women in the film collaborated with Strand to build the film’s rich and complex picture of female subjectivity blending poetic documentary with lyrical abstraction. Its rare and open depiction of female sensuality was controversial when first shown but Soft Fiction is now celebrated as one of the defining feminist films of the 1970s. Screening with Soft Fiction is Glasgow-based artist Anne-Marie Copestake’s And Under That, a portrait of two women which examines legacies and patterns of so-called emancipation. AEM