Gunvor Nelson – A Woman's Lot

Gunvor Nelson , who passed away aged 93 in January, is considered one of the most renowned figures in Swedish experimental cinema — though the definition itself is not without its paradoxes. In terms of nationality, Nelson made her first films in California and was active in the West Coast avant-garde scene, though she later returned to Sweden. 

Nelson herself preferred to describe her works as “personal films” rather than experimental. Personal does not imply confessional. Rather, her films reveal the artist’s distinct gaze and her tactile relationship with the materiality of film — her own brushstroke.

A teenage admirer of Helene Schjerfbeck, Nelson offers a multifaceted depiction of the female life cycle, one that remains strikingly relevant today.

Screening programme:

Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley: Schmeerguntz (1966, 15 min)
The debut film by Nelson and her friend Dorothy Wiley is sharp in its critique and raw in its physicality. As young mothers, they were frustrated by the gap between the messy reality of their daily lives and the sanitized, idealized images of motherhood pushed by American television.

Gunvor Nelson: Frame Line (1983, 22 min)
Nelson’s first collage film expresses a sense of alienation in her native country. Black-and-white photographs of Stockholm and its inhabitants are transformed into new visual material. In animation, Nelson discovered a new way of probing reality.

Gunvor Nelson: Red Shift (1984, 50 min)
Filmed in her parents’ home in Kristinehamn, Red Shift features Nelson herself, her mother, and her daughter Oona. Across generations, the film weaves together themes of aging, care, responsibility — as well as love and guilt, resonating through excerpts from letters written by Wild West gunslinger Calamity Jane to her daughter.

Tytti Rantanen