Gunvor Nelson in Person

Tonight's program draws on Gunvor Nelson's first two decades of filmmaking and focuses on her intimate evocations of the women in her family. Both My Name is Oona and Time Being are portraits. The first, a magical early film, depicts her daughter as a young girl coming into a sense of her own being. The second, which portrays her dying mother, is a moving record of the difficulty of bearing witness to death. The beautiful Red Shift is haunted by all three generations of women; the voice-over of Calamity Jane's letters to her daughter adds poignancy to Nelson's intricately observed interactions of her own family. Memories are encountered in each room.

My Name is Oona (1969, 10 mins, B&W, From Canyon Cinema). Red Shift (1984, 50 mins, B&W, PFA Collection). Time Being (1991, 8 mins, Silent, B&W, Canyon Cinema).