Gunvor Nelson Program 1

Director: Gunvor Nelson

1973 / 85min / 16mm

"“Gunvor Nelson launched her film career with a pair of raucous collage films made with her friend Dorothy Wiley. In Schmeerguntz, glamorized images of American womanhood clash with the reality of messy diapers and clogged kitchen sinks, revealing ‘a society which hides its animal functions beneath a shiny public surface’ (Film Quarterly). The surreal extravaganza Fog Pumas was a grand prize winner at the 1967 EXPRMTL festival in Knokke. My Name is Oona, perhaps Nelson’s best-known film, is an impressionistic portrait of her daughter with a memorably repetitive soundtrack partly created by Steve Reich. Kirsa Nicholina is at once a lyrical and boldly graphic birth film. Moons Pool, filmed entirely underwater with naked male and female bodies, is a dazzling example of Nelson’s visual and aural poetry. The serene Time Being is a loving, meditative film of Nelson’s mother, in bed, approaching death.” —Series curator David Schwartz

Schmeerguntz (Gunvor Nelson, 1966, 14 mins)

Fog Pumas (Gunvor Nelson, 1967, 25 mins)

My Name is Oona (Gunvor Nelson, 1969, 10 mins)

Kirsa Nicholina (Gunvor Nelson, 1969, 16 mins)

Moons Pool (Gunvor Nelson, 1973, 15 mins)

Time Being (Gunvor Nelson, 1991, 5 mins)

Distributor: Canyon Cinema, Filmform

Introduction by filmmaker Lynne Sachs on Saturday, November 21st

Part of Gunvor Nelson’s Personal Cinema