Chick Strand, co-founder of Canyon Cinema along with Bruce Baillie, combines in her work "personal" filmmaking and ethnographic documentary, sensual lyricism with a continuing interest in Mexican life, magic realism and tribal evolution. Anselmo and the Women (1986, 35 mins, Color): "I met Anselmo and his family twenty years ago, and since then I have made three films about them. Anselmo is a street musician and he has a little band. When I met him, he was very poor. He lived in a house with no electricity and dirt floors, with his wife and eight children.... I admired him for his tenacity and strength of spirit. Whatever money he could earn with his band, he used to send all of his children to school and to pay for music lessons for his sons.... Anselmo is by nature an intelligent man. In his heart he always wanted more for himself. Through the years he had many lovers and with them, more children.... The film was shot ten years ago, when Anselmo's current lover was Cruz.... Together, she and Anselmo had two more children. The film is about how Anselmo, his wife Adela and his lover Cruz feel about the situation and about their lives...." Chick Strand By the Lake (1986, 9.5 mins, Color): "This is a sort of collage film, using images shot for other films that somehow never were finished. The sound comes from various sound gathering adventures. Some were recorded at Lake Tahoe, more during an operation on a horse, and some is taken from a tape of an old radio program, 'I Love a Mystery.'" C.S. Fake Fruit (1986, 22 mins, Color): "In the town where I spend my time in Mexico, I had an American friend, a man who was a painter. He has married a Mexican woman and had three children with her.... For years he tried to think of schemes which would make him money.... He started making paper maché fruit and vegetables to sell to local tourist stores. They became very popular, and before he could think twice...he had made a paradise for himself: really nice beautiful women to work with everyday, lots of deals to make, business to do, people to see, supplies to buy, things to sell...but he got bored with the whole thing. This is a film about the women who worked for him." C.S. Artificial Paradise (1986, 12.5 mins, Color): "This is about those wonderful experiences that we sometimes have when we love a person secretly.... These experiences become mythical, since the beloved is quite simply beautiful in all ways because we never give circumstances a chance to change it into something less tender. I met Berna one day when I was looking at a ranch near my Mexican town.... He was a really beautiful Indian guy about 18 years old. It didn't click until I sat down with the landlord on the steps and watched this kid work. What movement! What art! Well, why not, I thought and went over and asked Berna if he'd do it. He said sure. Very politely, he took my hand in both of his, and said, whenever you want...it will be a big adventure to make a film. And so we began." C.S.