San Francisco Cinematheque Program Notes (1995)

Program Notes 1995 NELSON & WILEY'S BEFORE NEED REDRESSED GUNVOR NELSON AND DOROTHY WILEY IN PERSON Thursday, April 13, 1995 - Center for the Arts This evening's program is the first time the Cinematheque has screened Gunvor Nelson's films since the fall of 1992, when a full retrospective entitled Gunvor Nelson: A life in film was organized on the occasion of her return to Sweden. After thirty-two years of living, teaching (at the San Francisco Art Institute) and working in the Bay area. Nelson returned to her native country. The retrospective was a way of saying goodbye to a wonderful filmmaker and teacher and we are very pleased to welcome her back. "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 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." —Film Quarterly, Fall 1971 interview with Gunvor Nelson The symbols Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley choose to express these interior states are as varied as the many writings about their films. Nelson and Wiley's work has been claimed as feminist while also being seen as formalist: working within the school of light and dark, shape, color, application, texture or line. Certainly these are all at issue in their work, but they are explored in such a complex manner and with such vivid emotion that the resulting cinema can equally be claimed as feminist, formalist and experimental. At screenings of Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley's work the audience's reaction, and the depth of response that is expressed is very striking. In one interview, when asked about the climate of her Swedish culture. Nelson said that she found it difficult to express some emotions and that perhaps these feelings came through her films. The films do speak to the viewer, whether through form, or content, or subject. This is truly a human cinema. Before Need Redressed (1994); 16mm, color, sound, 75 minutes We think a lot of the film is absurd.. .It is on the brink of being too serious and too stupid. It's complex. There are all these unexpected things. Things are multi-layered. That's our point of view. The beauty the woman sees in the different roles she's taken in her life and looking back on those states of being is both beautiful, pathetic and absurd. (GN) Light Years Expanding (1987)', 16mm, color, 25 minutes A collage film. Traversing stellar distances continues. "(GN) A further development of elements seen in Light Years (1987), Light Years Expanding extends the first film's themes and techniques... "All her recent films suggest that while the distance of time makes home further, the intensity of memory makes it richer." —Parabola Dorothy Wiley was trained as a High School English teacher, and as a wife and mother she brings a practical love of film, and an attention to life's details to their work. Her first film was made with Gunvor Nelson out of their homes after Wiley's husband gave a half- hour lesson on how to use a camera. Ernest Callenbach of Film Quarterly wrote of Schmeerguntz (1965), "A society which hides its animal functions beneath a shiny public surface deserves to have such films as Schmeerguntz shown everywhere— in every PTA, every Rotary Club, every club in the land." The film won prizes at the Ann Arbor, Kent State University and Chicago Art Institute Film Festivals of 1966, was discussed in 43