Gunvor Nelson (1931—2025)

GUNVOR NELSON. SOURCE: FESTIVAL DE SEVILLA.

I discovered how beautiful things look through the camera... A melon or dirty dishes, seen with a lens in close-up were translated into something else... The camera became like binoculars; you zero in on a small area and isolate it, and it becomes more precious because it’s selected. —Gunvor Nelson

GUNVOR NELSON: DEPARTURES. SOURCE: RE:VOIR VIDEO, GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

GME remembers Gunvor Nelson, who passed away on Monday, January 6th, 2025, at the age of 94. A pioneering experimental filmmaker active since the early 1960s, Nelson was born and raised in Kristinehamn, Sweden, before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and made films for over 50 years. Her 1966 collaboration with Dorothy Wiley, SCHMEERGUNTZ, captured (in the words of Lynne Sachs) the “raw, messy ecstasy of being a mother” and revealed (in the words of John Sundholm) “surreal comedy behind idealized images and how the supposedly radical, so-called American avant-garde film world had so far been a male territory.”

While not unified by a particular theme or style, Nelson’s films were personal evocations culled from specific moments and vantage points in her life. Nelson herself once remarked: “I have made both surrealistic and expressionistic films, but I prefer the term ‘personal film.’ That is what it is about.” As Sundholm noted in Nelson’s obituary in Filmform: “The films grew out of her current life situations… Nelson filmed from the position in which she would find herself at the time, uncompromisingly, without shying away from painful topics or emotions — never imposing anything onto what was taking place in front of the camera. Due to her integrity and self-criticism she always preferred that the films would speak for her.”

GUNVOR NELSON: LIGHT YEARS. SOURCE: RE:VOIR VIDEO, GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

Nelson’s best-known work, MY NAME IS OONA (1969), is a rhythmically-structured film featuring footage of her daughter Oona reciting her name and days of the week. Described by Amos Vogel in Village Voice as “one of the most perfect recent examples of poetic cinema,” MY NAME IS OONA was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2019.

GME distributes SCHMEERGUNTZ and MY NAME IS OONA in the Re:Voir Video collection DEPARTURES, which also features Nelson’s films TAKE OFF (1962) and MOONS POOL (1973). This collection is available to the North American university market as a DVD and downloadable DSL files.

Furthermore, GME distributes Nelson’s films FOG PUMAS (1967), FRAME LINE (1983—2014), LIGHT YEARS (1987), and BEFORE NEED REDRESSED (1994) in the Re:Voir collection LIGHT YEARS, which is also available on both DVD and DSL formats. The DVD publication of LIGHT YEARS is accompanied by a 124-page booklet comprised of critical essays and an interview with Nelson by Julie Savelli, lecturer in film studies at the University of Montpellier 3.

To acquire Nelson’s titles for institutional use, please visit our ordering info page.