“She rejects the classification of ‘feminist artist,’” the film scholar Gene Youngblood told The Santa Fe New Mexican in 1999, when some of Strand’s films were being shown at the College of Santa Fe. Chick Strand was born Mildred Totman on Dec. 3, 1931, in Berkeley, Calif., to Russel and Eleanor Totman. She first developed an interest in film while studying anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1960s, inspired by the growing free speech movement, Strand began hosting makeshift screenings in her backyard with her first husband, Paul Anderson Strand, an artist, and the experimental film impresario Bruce Baillie. As word spread, they quickly became carnivalesque productions, with Strand, Baillie and other regulars dressing in costumes and performing live while the films were shown to an increasingly large group of strangers.

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Persons: ’, Gene Youngblood, Barbara Hammer, Shirley Clarke, Chick Strand, Mildred Totman, Russel, Eleanor Totman, Chick, Strand, Paul Anderson Strand, Bruce Baillie, Baillie Organizations: Santa Fe New, College of Santa, University of California Locations: Santa Fe New Mexican, College of Santa Fe, Berkeley, Calif, Strand