San Francisco Cinematheque Program Notes (1998)

Program Notes 1998 GUNVOR NELSON: THE LONG FILMS Sunday, November 22, 1998 — San Francisco Art Institute — 7:30pm Gunvor Nelson's work as a filmmaker and as a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute has influenced the Bay Area's film community for more than twenty years. Gunvor grew up in Kristinehamn, Sweden. After living in England and Holland, she returned to Sweden and attended Stockholm's Konstfakskolan. She moved to the U.S. in 1953 and obtained a BA from Humboldt State College, and in 1960, received an MFA degree in Painting and Art History from Mills College in Oakland. After a brief return trip to Sweden, she moved back to the Bay Area and married Robert Nelson, a fellow art student (and maker of celebrated "underground" films such as Oh Dem Watermelons and The Great Blondino). She moved from painting to filmmaking in 1965 with the release of Schmeerguntz (made with Dorothy Wiley). Her films have had an inestimable impact upon the development of experimental filmmaking in the U.S.—particularly on the West Coast—and have influenced a generation of film artists using cinema as a vehicle for the expression of personal concerns. After living in the USA for 32 years, she returned to Sweden in 1992. "A central theme in Nelson's work is her meditation on the nature of female beauty. She contrasts the contemporary American definition of female attractiveness with the more universal principle of feminine beauty perceived in nature. She sees these two definitions as irreconcilable because the cultural model is based on repression of instinctual and natural female behavior and appearance. Although the woman today is trained to purchase all of her natural functions (embodied in cosmetics), the natural woman remains beneath all the artificial surface, and Gunvor Nelson's filmmaking helps us rediscover her and redefine her beauty on a human scale. "Yet, in dealing with childhood, birth, sexuality and self-hood, her films have universal appeal. Like Doris Lessing, Nelson believes that what is most deeply personal often connects mysteriously with what is most widely shared in human experience. 'I want,' says Nelson, 'to go into myself as much as possible and hopefully it will be universal.'" (June M. Gill, "The Films of Gunvor Nelson," Film Quarterly, Spring 1977) Field Study #2 (1988); I6mm, color, sound, 8 minutes "Another collage film. Part of the on-going series of Field Studies (which includes Frame Line, Light Years, and Light Years Expanding) combining live action with animation. Superimpositions of dark pourings are perceived through the film. Suddenly a bright color runs across the picture and delicate drawings flutter past. Grunts from animals are heard." (GN, Canyon Cinema: Film/Video Catalogue #7) Red Shift (1984); 16mm, b&w, sound, 50 minutes Red Shift is a film about relationships, generations, and time. The subtitle is All Expectation. The movement of a luminous body toward and away from us can be found in its spectral lines. A shift toward red occurs with anybody that is self-luminous and receding. There is uncertainty about how much observable material exists. (GN) "It involves Gunvor Nelson, her mother, and her daughter. Carefully and with great tenderness, it focuses on these three women, trying to show us their relationship, succeeding with an emotional impact that is hardly ever found in such a subject. It is not the social context which is exploited but the little gestures, everyday events. Red Shift is a radical film; it sets new measures for avant-garde filmmaking dealing with personal problems." (Alf Bold, The Arsenal, Berlin) Light Years (1987); 16mm, color, sound, 28 minutes "Not only is Light Years one of Gunvor Nelson's greatest achievements, it's also one of the most beautiful films ever made. That covers a lot of time and distance, as 'ever' does." (Albert Kilchesty, LA Filmforum) Light Years is a collage film and a journey through the Swedish landscape, traversing stellar distances in units of 5,878 trillion miles. It is a film acutely in the present reflecting our temporal existence ... continuous and imperfect (GN) 75