This special program honors acclaimed avant-garde filmmaker Gunvor Nelson (1931–2025). The screening features four works from across Nelson’s career—Schmeerguntz (1966), Frame Line (1983), Red Shift (1984), and Trace Elements (2003)—highlighting her groundbreaking explorations of womanhood, family, identity, and place.

Curated by Sarah Keller, associate professor of Art and Cinema Studies at UMass Boston; Sara Jordenö, filmmaker and assistant professor at Rhode Island School of Design; Shira Segal, lecturer in Comparative Media Studies at MIT; and artist Wenhua Shi. Prints and files courtesy of Canyon Cinema and Filmform.

Stick around after the screening for a Q and A with Keller, Jordenö, and Segal reflecting on Nelson’s lasting influence on experimental cinema.

Short Film Program

Schmeerguntz

Directed by Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley (1965, 15 min.).

Codirected with Dorothy Wiley, this provocative and darkly funny feminist classic dismantles the myth of the ideal American housewife. Combining grotesque imagery and biting humor, it exposes the messy realities hidden beneath polished domestic life.

Frame Line

Directed by Gunvor Nelson (1983, 22 min.).

Nelson’s first collage film reflects on her return to Sweden through a kaleidoscope of imagery drawn from Stockholm. The film blends animation and found footage, shifting between structure and improvisation to explore memory and place.

Red Shift

Directed by Gunvor Nelson (1984, 50 min.).

One of Nelson’s most celebrated works, this layered family portrait merges past and present in a dreamlike meditation on intimacy and memory. Featuring her own relatives, the film navigates the tensions of family life with tenderness and complexity.

Trace Elements

Directed by Gunvor Nelson (2003, 9 min.).

Created after Nelson embraced digital video, this meditative piece captures the artist’s shadow moving across her studio floor, intercut with lush close-ups of flowers and plants. It transforms simple gestures into an exploration of perception, movement, and discovery.

About Gunvor Nelson

Gunvor Nelson (1931–2025) was a prominent figure in American and Swedish avant-garde cinema. Born in Sweden, she studied painting before relocating to California in 1953, where she became involved in the Canyon Cinema collective, encountering filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Chris Strand, and Bruce Baillie. Nelson’s deeply personal yet shockingly universal films embody extensive experimentation—including animation, stop-motion, scratching, or painting on film, lens inventions, sound manipulation, exploration of interiors, framing, and nature—processes that served to explore her experiences related to family and identity, her life as an expatriate, and the cycle of birth and death.