About the programme:

RPM Festival and MFA Boston co-present a special screening program Gunvor Nelson: Call & Response, honoring one of the highly acclaimed Avard Garde filmmakers Gunvor Nelson. This program features a total of four films from different decades of her long lasting career. Curated by Sarah Keller, Sara Jordeno, Shira Segal and Wenhua Shi, the event will take place at the Harry and Mildred Remis Auditorium on Sunday, October 5th at 2:30 PM.

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, and 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.
Her debut, Schmeerguntz (1966), co-directed with Dorothy Wiley, was a feminist classic blending humor and grotesque imagery. Nelson’s deeply personal films often drew on her life, exploring themes of womanhood, family, and identity. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Nelson began focusing on her roots, creating films about Kristinehamn and her family including Red Shift (1984).
Between 1983 and 1990, she produced five experimental collage films, including Frame Line (1983), at Filmverkstan in Stockholm, known for their innovation and complexity. Returning permanently to Sweden in 1992, Nelson embraced digital video and received renewed recognition in the Swedish art world.
Trace Elements (2003) from this period will be included in the program. She also influenced generations of filmmakers through her teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute (1970–1992).