San Francisco Cinematheque Program Notes (1992)

1992 Program Notes Program III Thursday, November 19,1992 Frame Line (1983); 16mm, b&w, sound, 22 minutes Red Shift (1983); 16mm, b&w, sound, 50 minutes Light Years (1987); 16mm, color, sound, 28 minutes Gunvor Nelson's two long films from the 1970s, Trollstenen (1976) and Before Need (1979, made with Dorothy Wiley), began to address issues which she would explore more deeply in subsequent works. Family, memory, time, displacement from one's native culture, mortality, and mother-daughter relationships: these became significant elements in Gunvor's films of the 1980s. Beginning with her two breakthrough films of 1983— Frame Line and Red Shift —and continuing through her new film, Kristina's Harbor & Old Digs, Gunvor mines a rich and seemingly inexhaustible lode of images and ideas. With these films, too, Gunvor reasserted her skills as a painter and collagist, often painting directly over photographs and film images and frequently combining three- dimensional objects (leaves, crumpled paper, etc.) with "flat" two-dimensional images. Most importantly, however, Gunvor began a profound exploration of self in these films—a project which she continues refining and enhancing in each new film she makes. For me, the intention is trying to dig deep and find those images, to find the essence of your feelings. I guess about a year ago it just struck me that the outside world for me, all those things that are there, are symbols for what I feel. Trying to use film as a medium to express what's inside you, you have to use those symbols. If you want to communicate you can't just show a simple cup the way it is always shown; you have to find an angle that actually expresses those feelings, not only for other people, but for yourself, so you don't just see that cup or the coffee grounds. Most people won't have seen it the way you have seen it, and you have to dig into it really deeply to show yourself, and hopefully other people then, what you see. But specifically, it's very hard to tell what you want to express. I've had many people discuss with me, especially in Sweden, how many artists have this line of doing art for a cause, or for the masses, or something like that, and they are just the medium for expressing this thing which is bigger than they are. I want to go into myself as much as possible and hopefully it will be universal, or another world that somebody can look at. In seeing other people's art, the more personal it is, the more into their head it is, the more I'm interested in it. To see other people's worlds. To communicate that way. So the more personal it is, the more interesting it is. —Gunvor Nelson, "An Interview with Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley," Brenda Richardson, Film Quarterly, Fall 1971 Frame Line (1983); 16mm, b&w, sound, 22 minutes Frame Line is a collage film in black and white. Glimpses (both visual and audial) of Stockholm, of people, of gestures, flags, and the Swedish national anthem appear through drawings, paintings and cut-outs. It is a film with an eerie flow between the ugly and the beautiful about returning, about roots, and also about reshaping. (GN) Absolutely blowing the lid off any attempt at patronization. Frame Line by Gunvor Nelson took the advantage to radically ignore any limits of emotional expression. Without excuses, or so much as even a token glance back. Frame Line at once set standards that put to rest that silly notion "the tradition of the Avant Garde." Rendering explanation redundant in its wake. Frame Line alternately bulldozers and embraces a ruthless sort of Everyman's puzzle; a re-arrangeable pop-bead rosary of personal fx with framelines the only constant. Distilled bits of psyche break from the assemblage to skitter across struggling planes seeking niches and forming patterns with careening desperation. Some fit. 93