Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Los Angeles Filmforum/Rotations and the Academy Museum.
A pioneer of personal cinema and feminist film who never shied away from challenges, Gunvor Nelson’s (1931–2025) innovative films combine painting, collage and sound experimentation, embodying humor, resistance, intimacy and tactile sensation. Nelson’s early films frequently reflect the inner and outer qualities, thoughts and voices of women in the 1960s and ’70s; homes, daughters and mothers are particularly important themes in her work. Moving from painting to still photography, from analog film to digital media, as each new medium collides with a multitude of everyday objects, her work delves deeper into the texture of life and the saturated past, uncovering an intuitive yet delicate sensibility that retreats from the real world into another, imaginatively reconstructed one. Born in Sweden but most closely associated with the San Francisco Bay area’s avant-garde film community, Nelson inspired countless experimental filmmakers and artists through her work and her time teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. After returning to Sweden in 1992, she continued exploring and experimenting with new audiovisual languages, leaving us with a rich and unimaginable legacy.
This citywide, multivenue retrospective will cover a range of Nelson’s works, from her debut film, a feminist classic, Schmeerguntz (1966) (co-directed with Dorothy Wiley), to the late abstract video art Snowdrift a.k.a. Snowstorm (2001), with several other essential and influential masterpieces created in the years between.
The program trilogy will be co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum/Rotations, the Academy Museum and the UCLA Film & Television Archive on March 22, 27 and 28. The screenings will begin with introductions by film scholar Steve Anker and a pre-recorded video with filmmaker Lynne Sachs.
Series programmed by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu and Steve Anker.
March 22 – Program 1: Red Shift at 2220 Arts + Archives
March 27 – Program 2: Moon Pools at The Academy Museum
March 28 – Program 3: Light Years Expanding at the UCLA Film & Television Archive
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/series/gunvor-nelson-tribute-trilogy-2026
