Tree–Line (1998) by Gunvor Nelson

Tree–Line is Nelson’s first video. It is based on sound and image material that accompanied Premiere’s software at the time. Nelson simply began to play with the programme when learning how to work digitally. The starting point of the video is the soundscape and afterwards movement and the image of a tree appears. Tree–Line is a profound reflection on the intersection of film and video, photographic (indexical) media vs. electronic media. (Film Form)

Schmeerguntz (1966) by Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley

Adopting a decidedly crude and vulgar aesthetic (which happily coincided with the fact that each was working in film for the first time), Nelson and Wiley created a rapid-fire attack on the most cherished of all American icons, motherhood and the home. Images of beauty-pageant contestants and idealized advertising models were jarringly rephotographed from the television screen and rudely intercut with such graphic images as a pregnant woman (Wiley) laboring to get into her underwear, an extreme close-up of excrement being wiped from a baby’s rear end, a woman vomiting […], a filthy toilet being cleaned, a used sanitary napkin dropping from between a pair of legs, and an unrelenting stream of other equally visceral images. Nelson and Wiley profess not to have been influenced by popular feminist theory of the time, but their debunking of one of America’s most potent and carefully controlled myths resonated with audiences throughout the country. (Steve Anker: The Films of Gunvor Nelson)

My Name is Oona (1969) by Gunvor Nelson

My Name ls Oona exists on the opposite end of the artistic spectrum from Kirsa Nicholina (1969). While still focusing on a female subject, here of her young daughter, Nelson chose to create a totally compressed and lyrical evocation of her child’s inner and outer worlds. […] With a soundtrack influenced by Steve Reich, My Name ls Oona correspondingly loops and superimposes black-and-white envisionings of her daughter at play and in contemplation. […] Nelson has said that she knew that she did not want a normal, “cute” picture of Oona: “l think the world she was in and my childhood world are combined there. As a child, you’re pretty secure in your known world, but the rest is very mysterious and scary; maybe there are monsters and trolls lurking out there. even if you’ve never seen them.” (Steve Anker: The Films of Gunvor Nelson)

Time Being (1991) by Gunvor Nelson

With the simple eloquence reminiscent of a haiku, [Nelson] limits herself to a few lengthy shots of her nearly comatose mother lying in a hospital bed shortly before her death. We can recognize the features of the woman from Trollstenen (1976) and Red Shift (1984), but in this case she is oblivious to the camera and to anyone else, including the filmmaker. Having determined to make one more portrait of her mother, Nelson realized that a direct and uncompromising portrayal of her at that time was all that she could or should convey. After beginning with brief glimpses of photos from her mother’s youth, Nelson cuts to […] an extreme close-up of the old woman’s profile that lasts well over a minute, her mouth open, her eyelid occasionally moving as the only indication of her sentience. Nelson’s unyielding eye once again forces us to see the image of a woman unlike any we are ever permitted to see, and this cinematic gaze intrudes in a way that no natural view could ever equal. (Steve Anker: The Films of Gunvor Nelson)

Moons Pool (1973) by Gunvor Nelson

With Moons Pool, Nelson, by thrusting herself into the picture as the protagonist, created her most personal exploration of the crossover between the physical dimensions of cinema and its unique ability to depict the female body. Focusing on themes of water and the night sky, Moons Pool connects with an elemental sensuality that has long been associated with female unconsciousness. Once again the sound track consists of a stream of spoken words, here an ongoing series of questions and statements made by Nelson herself: “I don’t know why we’re given these bodies to care for, anyway”, “l saw in the sky the moon shining on my face,” and “I see you see me through my body.” Moons Pool is both a celebration and a radical reexperiencing of her bodily limits, while it is at the same time her first filmic self-portrait. (Steve Anker: The Films of Gunvor Nelson)

Light Years (1987) by Gunvor Nelson

Nelson made seven more films between 1985 and her return to Sweden in 1993. Each in its own way is a composition of exquisitely rendered and rigorously distilled moments that further expands on her previous work. Light Years treats the Swedish rural landscape as an onrushing series of moving vistas beyond reach, but which can still be savored for its formal splendor. In it Nelson hauntingly exposes the fragility of life through the unlikely examples of a vividly rotting apple and the crushing of a tiny fruit worm, as well as deepening her uses of on-screen image manipulation by emotively marking up photographs (again, without her hands ever being evident) of landscapes that we otherwise see as moving pictures. (Steve Anker: The Films of Gunvor Nelson)