Gunvor Nelson

Gunvor Nelson's first video work.

This magnus opus is a domestic symphony from a woman's point of view, the portrait of a grandmother, mother and child and their home. The women and their personal objects are mostly seen alone or relating to one another (except for touching scenes of the grandmother and grandfather together). A key aspect of Red Shift is the reading of selections from Calamity Jane's "Diaries," the most narrative aspect of the film. The Diaries are read against activities seen through a window, life passing by (people walking in winter, a river flowing). They tell how Jane lost her daughter and had to survive by using her talents to act like a tough and physically competitive man...

A collage film and a journey through the Swedish landscape, traversing stellar distances in units of 5878 trillion miles. It is a film acutely in the present reflecting our temporal existence ... continuous and imperfect.

Shadows of people inhabit a wintry road, casting darkness over the tracks. What happens when this substance is washed away by fleeting reflections and blended into new matter, color and forms? And sound: feet tramping endlessly round, round like hands on a clock. This is happening now... - Sue Anne Moody

“In NATURAL FEATURES Nelson mingles hundreds of still images with 3-D objects and “real” images photographed through glass layerings into a free-associative and playfully bizarre form of animation. Perhaps no film has more successfully blended an evident passion for painting with a sensitivity to filmmaking such as lush pigments alternate with and punctuate the different photographic layerings” – Steve Anker

Ellion Ness, a thoroughly professional stripper, goes through her paces, bares her body, and then, astonishingly and literally, transcends it. While the film makes a forceful political statement on the image of woman and the true meaning of stripping, the intergalactic transcendence of its ending locates it firmly within the mainstream of joyous humanism and stubborn optimism.

Kirsa Nicholina records the birth of a child at home by the Lamaze method. The father assists in the birth, while a physician guides him. At the moment of birth, the mother reaches down and grasps the hand of the emerging child and guides it out of her body and into her arms.

Frame Line is a collage film in black and white. Glimpses (both visual and audial) of Stockholm, people, 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.

A lyrical, surreal film populated by an assortment of human beings, creatures, places and events.

A hilarious, grotesque and grave attack on the public ideal of the American housewife.

Movement begins and ends with snowflakes, fleeting, floating, whirling and dancing in constant restlessness. Sudden changes in direction, composition, background, density, color and contrast interrupt the perpetual flow. 

"OLD DIGS is an inner journey through the sights and sounds of Kristinehamn as reflected in its central river." - Steve Anker

Another feature of the new digital (and visually inferior) medium is that sound plays a much more prominent role than in most of her films. Trace Elements, Nelson’s latest work, is another “sound video”, despite the fact the camera is more active this time. It feels as though only now Nelson has totally come to grips with her new technique. She approaches the moving image again through highlighting the act of shooting. This way she continues the ever-present indexical tradition of her filmmaking despite the fact that the video is based on the idea that the camera never quite finds its target. I believe the active, searching camera in Trace Elements indicates Nelson will continue making movies for many years to come.

The film that is mostly shot underwater, in a pool, begins with footage of water and a close-up of Nelson from which we move to her body immersed in water in a bath-tub from which yet another transition occurs to a pool with male and female naked bodies swimming underwater. The latter part of the film is almost totally liberated from speech, and has a dreamlike, complex soundtrack consisting of sounds of waves, voices, water and music woven together into a seamless web of sounds.

A feature-length documentary directed by Dorothy Wiley and Gunvor Nelson about five working San Francisco artists: William T. Wiley, Robert Hudson, William Allan, William Geis and Robert Nelson-- A profile of five friends and their creative processes.

Laced with memories and dreams from the past, the film is a multi-layered personal documentary of the life of filmmaker Gunvor Nelson's parents and family in Sweden.

Gunvor Nelson stares intently at her mother Carin, a woman whose body has been devastated by the challenges of her last days on this earth. In three astute shots, Nelson looks with honesty rather than awe at a woman whose spirit has somehow flown away but whose body still demands a share of our time and our space.

Light Years Expanding is a further elaboration of Light Years, Nelson’s journey into the Swedish landscape in which she is blending animation with live-action. Whereas movement was one of the prime characteristics of Light Years, Light Years Expanding revolves more around the image-work, thus foreshadowing her last and most complicated collage film Natural Features.

Gunvor Nelson's two-part film was recorded in Kristinehamn where she grew up and will return to live. KRISTINA'S HARBOR is an impressionistic depiction of daily life in this small Swedish city, suggesting how it has or has not changed in relation to its history.

"In 1972, Gunvor Nelson was invited to present a survey of her films at the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. The invitation came from Sally Dixon, the museum's founder and first curator of film, a figure instrumental not only in shaping the culture of experimental film in Pittsburgh but also in actively supporting filmmakers and their projects...Pittsburgh filmmaker J.T. Vale documented Nelson's visit with a 16mm camera, creating the short film Oona Is My Daughter's Name . The film was long thought to be lost until a 16mm print was discovered in Nelson's apartment. It features rare moments in which Gunvor Nelson discusses her work, particularly My Name Is Oona , a masterpiece of editing whose soundscape is based on a loop of her daughter's voice." - Julia Mettenleiter, Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2026.

From 2015 to 2017, Lynne Sachs visited with Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson, three multi-faceted artists who have embraced the moving image throughout their lives.

Gunvor Nelson plays freely and naturally in a garden confronting the camera with nature, and nature with the camera to reveal a new life force and cycle. The camera climbs up a dark red stem, across the spiny frost hat outlines the walls of a budding flower. It rummages and rustles among the garden floor. The penetrating lens is heavy on the delicate leaves and on the viewer retina.

A self-portrait by two women filmmakers in celebration of their friendship and filmmaking.