JUNE M. GILL The Films of Gunvor Nelson Gunvor Nelson is a West Coast woman film- maker whose works are currently receiving critical attention from such diverse sources as Pauline Kael and the editors of Playboy. Her films, which have been circulating quietly for several years in the West and East Coast underground, have now begun to attract national public coverage, thanks largely to her film Take Off, an inspired satire on the strip tease. Nelson has thus far made seven major works: Schmeerguntz, Fog Pumas, My Name is Oona, Kirsa Nicholina, Take Off, Moon's Pool, and Trolistenen. In the West Coast tradition at its best, these films reveal the organic forces in the lives of their characters and develop an intimate communication with nature. Like Bruce Baillie and James Broughton, two San Francisco film- makers she admires, Nelson uses a highly crafted style to explore nature and the interior. Superbly shot and meticulously edited, her films rely on a variety of carefully conceived optical effects to expand the audience's vi Although Nelson denies any specific fem intent in her films and avoids the narrow tradit of the pamphleteer, they are significant to the Women's Movement in that they describe with accuracy, sensitivity, and humor the paradoxes of women’s experience in contemporary America. Her films are “feminist in the largest sense of the word: they search for what is original, instinctive, and natural in womankind—the human face hidden behind the masks imposed by cultural stereotypes. ‘A central theme in Nelson's work is her medi- tation on the nature of female beauty. She con- trasts the contemporary American definition of female attractiveness with the more universal principle of feminine beauty perceived in nature. She sees these two definitions as irreconcilable because the cultural model is based on the direct repression of instinctual and natural female be- havior and appearance. Her films suggest that the technological society is as dedicated to the eradi- cation of the organic in modern woman as it is toGUNVOR NELSON the eradication of the natural environment. Thus woman today is trained to purchase protection against all of her natural functions: deodorants to disguise her body's odor, pills to short-circuit her reproductive cycle, undergarments to reshape her body, and cosmetics to discolor her face. Yet somewhere beneath it all, a natural woman re rains; Nelson helps us to rediscover her and to redefine her beauty on a human scale. Yet, in dealing with childhood, birth, sexuality, and selfhood, her films have universal appeal. Like Doris Lessing, Nelson believes that what is most deeply personal often connects mysteriously with what is most widely shared in human experi ence. "I want,” says Nelson, "to go into myself as much as possible and hopefully it will be u versal” [Nelson's first film, Schmeerguntz (1965), deals with the now familiar conflict between the media image of the American woman and her daily reality. Interestingly enough, however, Nelson and hher collaborator Dorothy Wiley claim they made this film more or less independently of the ide- ology of Women's Liberation, Nelson explains their inspiration for the film this way: “We wanted to make a 16mm movie, I think. But we hhad no subject. And one day I was looking at all that gunk in the sink and thought of the contrast between what we do, and what we see that we ‘should’ be—in ads and things—and that was the idea right there—from the sink.” Schmeerguntz is a carefully edited collage film combining orig inal footage shot by Nelson and Wiley in their own homes with television, movie, and newsreel footage, photo animations, and montage se quences. They juxtapose poised and sanitized Miss America contestants side by side with grub- bier realities of the American housewife's daily ‘existence filmed in their own homes: Wiley as the pregnant mother vomiting with morning sickness or struggling to heave her unwieldly bulk into a garter belt, They juxtapose television commercials of Johnson and Johnson madonnas cooing over idle infants with shots of Wiley sponging excre ment from her baby's behind. In image after image, they jolt us into laughter at the comic icongruity between the false media image of the ‘American woman and the contrasting reality. Nelson and Wiley certainly deserve credit for making an early, forceful statement of this now popular theme, but Schmeergunce has another level of meaning, which is developed throughout Nelson's cinematic work: the quest for the true nature ofthe beautiful ‘One of the opening shots of Schmeerpuntz is a huge close-up of a woman's pregnant belly fol- lowed by a giant shot of the curving surface of the moon, Each close-up is so overpowering in its force, that at first the images are difficult to recognize. Only at the end of the film, when this juxtaposition is repeated, does the viewer under- ‘stand the significance of this analogy between the swelling form of the moon and the pregnant belly of a woman, Only then, after the film has in a sense reconditioned us, can we perceive the cosmic beauty that this metaphore lends to the human female body with child30 Pechaps more than any other in the film, this mage reveals Nelson's assumption that beauty Hes in the humble and often rejected physical lives of women. In their bodies, their physical processes, their daly rituals, women rediscover the formal unity between their own individual existences and the universe, Because of the moon's waxing and waning, which are equivalent to the cycle of preg ancy and birth, primitive cultures have often associated the moon with feminine forces. The original Earth Mother goddess of many civiliza tions was a moon goddess: Ishtar of Babylonia and Diana of Greece. Like Jung's dreamers, Nelson is retrieving and reaffirming, through her own imaginative processes, a forgotten human ar: guage of vision and symbol embodying women's condition. At the same time, she is developing her own repertoire of imagery as an artist; thus in Take Off and Moon's Pool Nelson uses moon: woman symbolism again in deeper and more ‘complex ways Fog Pumas (1967), Nelson's second film, also done with Wiley, provides a transition from her first experiment in film-making to her more fully realized later films. A hybrid of Diary of a Mad Housewife and Un Chien Andalou, Fog Pumas begins with the domestic terors of an imaginative hhousewife and plunges into the richly surrealistic fantasy life in which she explores alternatives to drudgery. The marvelous opening scene borrows from the climate of Sekmeergunts. The heroine GUNVOR NELSON, stares into the alphabet soup she has devotedly prepared for het children and sees, 10 her horror, the letters wickedly rearrange themselves to spell ut "Too bad,” apparently a comment on her domestic fate. When her mate appears to steal a sandwich out of her very hands, she rebels and pummels him furiously, an act of comic revolt which triggers a series of fantasy images as rich as any in the repertoire of surrealist cinema. As in Schmeerguntz, linear development is relatively unimportant here; favored images appear and dis: appear, are transformed or elaborated, creating a dreamlike flow of visuals. Within this complicated texture, certain recurring motifs suggest fantasy alternatives to the heroine's domestic dilemmas. We repeatedly see an aging woman whose lined, almost asexual features express an odd calm as she drinks coffee, waters plants, eats an apple. Though viewed briefly and enigmatically, she seems to suggest age as a refuge from the demands of serual roles and a haven for simple pleasures, Another series of images shows the heroine peering through a stereopticon at photos of herself comically dressed as vamp. She reacts with terror to this image as she dors to later sequences in which she flees, dressed in black lace and spike heels, from a pack of dogs. The conventional role of sex object seems almost as tuninviting as the malignant messages from the alphabet soup. ‘Other clusters of images seems to turn inward toward the unconscious—the heroine fishing among floating corpses of the past in a swimmingGUNVOR NELSON, pool, shots of giant pallid fish gliding through the ark waters of an aquarium, and a dvarf sinking {nto murky bath water. But these plunges yield uneasy, uncertain results, in contrast with the much clearer voyages into the unconscious in later films like Moon's Pool, The most positive impulses towards release are expressed by the children who move playfully and whimsically ‘among the levels of reality of the film. In the final sequence, Nelson focuses on their freedom—a small boy “liberates” a bicycle mysteriously tied t0 tree and rides off in solitary enjoyment. The strong visualization of this sequence (one of the few shot in color) suggests links between natural beauty (the grove of trees with their knotted trunks) and the unstructured, undefined reality ‘of childhood—two themes which Nelson takes up ‘again in My Name is Oona as alternatives to the unnatural, constricting female roles satirized in Schmeergunts. In My Name is Oona (1970), Nelson continues the process of exploring and recreating feminine mythology while extending the commen beauty begun in Sehmeergunts. Here beau antithesis of the pre-packaged model which Ne son exposed in her first film. My Name is Oona, 4 film- portrait of Nelson's nine-year-old daughter, is based on a rhythmical montage of shots showing Oona playing, grooming her horse, and riding horseback in the forest, Here natural beauty, ‘glimpsed only indirectly in Schmeerguncz and Fog Pumas is undeniably present. An elfin blond child, ona is as beautiful as the forest, sea, and beach 31 in which the film is set. Nelson emphasizes the attraction of each with elliptical cutting, liquid slow-motion photography, and flowing. super impositions. Oona's is the protean dreams hood, which impudently defies our definitions and cur structures, We are gradually immersed in her visions, where reality and fantasy blend and flow endlessly. Like Castaneda's “other realty.” Oona’s fantasy hints at another field of vision, ‘one from which “ordinary reality can be seen in perspective and given its true value. Fantasy provides the key to the deepest and most private self, that self which alone can challenge the ‘oppressive roles which constitute our public reality. Oona, a gil-child, living in the unspoiled world of her personal myths, unselfconsciously furnishes us with alternative perceptions of ""wo- ‘man’s place.” In her closeness to nature, Oona recalls legends which reach beyond her individual existence into the larger reservoir of feminine myth. Riding bareback through a dark forest, swirled in her blond hair, she recalls those other fair-haired hhorsewomen of Norse mythodology, the Valkyrie. This image, perhaps suggested to Nelson by her ‘omn Scandinavian heritage (she is Swedish), re minds us that for primitive woman there was no contradiction between beauty and strength, nor between feminity and power. The Valkyrie were, like Oona, “‘sun-bright” and “fair,” but strong, My Nast Is Oona2 skilful horsewomen and war goddesses of both war and fertility Nelson's next film, Kirsa Nicholina. takes a steady look at the feminine ritual of birth, It is perhaps the most explicit film of birth ever made ‘Outside medical circles. It is also one of the most moving precisely because it refuses to either dram: atize or romanticize the event, This momentous ‘occasion is simply allowed to be. The film quietly shows the birth of Kirsa Nicholina, the daughter bborn to friends of the film-maker in their Muir Beach home. In its supremely low-key way the n illustrates the advantages of natural child: birth, not the least of which is the fall participa- tion of Kirsa’s father in the events surroundin the birth. The comfortable, supportive setting of the home, the obvious warmth between the parents-to-be, the blessed absence of medical paraphernalia, and, finally, the intensely moving emergence of the child's body from the wom) create an enttely different paradigm of birth from the impersonal stainless-stel-and-white-tile medi cal one which our culture currently sanctions. Nelson chooses a style of great simplicity for Kirsa, in contrast to the complex editing and opticals of Oona. But her choice is corret, for it allows the drama to emerge from the event of birth itself, from its own natural climactic rhythms. Her camera is vigilant but calm it does not spare us the anatomy of birth, but perceives its savage beauty with an unruffied eye. Nelson makes the LaMaze teachings come alive and gives childbirth its first truly artistic expression in film through a woman's eyes Although Nelson undertook Kirsa to oblige the proud parents, the film, nevertheless, is an inte ral part of her work. It pushes further her search They were ws Ni for the natural and organic life under our civilized facade, for birth, like death, has been declared taboo in our society. Nelson unearths the physical reality of this most basic human event and returns it to us from the domain of the tight-lipped specialists. Kirsa may yet prove the most popular of Nelson's films, because ofits appeal to natural childbirth groups and growing numbers of pro- spective parents Mf Oona and Kirsa Nicholina incarnate the untainted innocence of infancy and youth, the stripper heroine of Take Off, Nelson's next film, appears to be their polar opposite. Take Off is & grim and funny cosmic satire on the strip tease, In this superbly composed and edited film there is ‘but one action, a strip performed by dancer Ellon Ness. Ness is the archtypal stripper—big, blond, buxom, with just the right degree of tawdriness. She is’ the tantalizing tower of flesh who, in slightly more modest form, adorns our television screens, our billboards and our magazines, selling everything from milk to mini-bikes. She is also the Linda Lovelace, the Devil in Miss Jones, and the Take it all off” gis who obligingly make every orifice and surface available to our collective fantasies. But her strip tease, instead of climaxing with total nudity, goes tradition one better as Ness removes her hair, her breasts, het arms, her legs and finally her now-bald pate, Thanks to special photographic and editing techniques, Nelson's heroine literally “takes it all off.” The totally available woman, represented by Ness’ stripper, is doomed; robbed of her mystery, her myths and her private world, she is an amazing robot des tined to self-destruct.GUNVOR NELSON ‘This moment of truth is probably the most ‘compelling in all of Nelson's films, Because she has so successfully reereated the fantasy, we are all the more violently wrenched away from it, and wwe react with laughter and shock. Yet out of this comic chaos something is indeed reborn. As NNess's body disintegrates, the black backdrop changes into the starry night sky, Suddenly @ pale ‘mineral shape resembling a bit of Ness’s demol- ished body reappears, like something which transcends even the total strip tease. Some quality in Nelson's woman manages to survive. ‘What is it that survives? Perhaps it is female sexuality, the powerful regenerative force that transcends the strippers cheap fagade, Seen in this way, Ness’s tawdry eroticism conceals a more clemental force, a sexuality which goes beyond titillation and is identified with eternal cycles of fertility, growth, and rebirth. Pethaps the strip tease isan historical derivative of ancient rites of the moon goddesses whose life-giving fertility was celebrated in sensual dances. In these erotic rituals, the moon priestesses’ dance tempted the gods fo copulate with them, insuring the cyclic rebirth” of the community through the fertility ofits women, Nelson's eroticism is, then, extremely comple: On one level, she parodies the shallow and exhibi tionistic sex of advertising; but, on another level, she suggests the genuine and profound signifi. ‘cance of female sexuality for the human com: ‘munity. As in Schmeerguntz, Nelson forces critical reevaluation of our cultural ideas. ‘Moon's Pool develops an even more complex view of sexuality. The film's imagery relates & journey of self-discovery through the revelation of the body. In contrast to Take-Off which showed the depersonalized, demythologized body of the stripper, Moan's Pool depicts a highly individual exploration of the film-maker's own body and body myth. It represents Nelson's acceptance of hhet own deepest physical self. Her nudity ex- presses her will to shatter the taboos which Alienate us from the body's wisdom. ‘As in Take-Off. the action takes the form of ritual dance as the naked bodies of the actors ‘swirl through the opalescent water. But this time the dance is stripped of its lasciviousness; it is no, longer display or seduction as in Take-Off. In- stead it becomes the pure beauty of physical ‘communion among the dancers. One is struck by the strong presence of the male dancer and by the intimacy between himself and the two women as they glide through the water, touching lightly and, easily, Nelson, it seems, is discovering simul- taneously her own body and its relationship to other bodies. Moon's Poo! expresses the strongest sense of male-female rapport seen in Nelson's work since the affectionate solidarity between husband and wife in Kirsa Nicholina ‘The rushing waters of the first sequence of ‘Moon's Pool plunge us into the traditionally cha- tie depths of woman's inner life. At first the surging of the waters expresses disorder as the film-maker abandons rational “masculine” con- trol of her perceptions. But beneath the surface chaos, we discover calmer, clearer waters—images, which Nelson uses to express her intuitive physical grasp of realty, a body wisdom which eliminates, the conflict between reason and feeling. Here too the gap between conventional “masculine” snd “feminine” narrows, as the male and female figures communicate clearly and easily through their bodies. The male dancer’s long. hair flows underwater with womanly grace and the women, in turn, move through the water with the lithe ease of beautiful male athletes, Nelson's evolution as a filmmaker from Scheer ‘guntz through Moon's Pool might thus be de- scribed as the gradual discovery of the Self. From, the plastic anti-beauty of the American Way of Life in Schmeerguntz she traveled complex paths through Fog Pumas to the confrontation of natural beauty in My Name is Oona and KireaNicholina. I these films, the film-maker ap- proaches self-acceptance indirectly through the figures of Oona and Kirsa’s mother, Take-Off is the final explosion of exploitative myths which epersonalize and alienate the body. It is an explosion which clears the path for Moon's Pool, recognition of this body, this Self Moon's Pool radiates a sense of - Trolistenen (Trolls Rock) is her Roots. In it she continues the search for the natural and original which she began in Schmeerguntz, 10 Moon's Pool, Nelson cast off the last vestiges of the exploitative American social myths surrounding her. Thus, in Troll- stenen, she can return to her Swedish origins with, new eyes. Strengthened in her personal vision, she ean now confront her family’s myths, rituals, an traditions, in short, the whole complex of com: iues, and reckon their importance. In so doing, she moves subtly away from the somewhat abstract sense of self in Moon's Poot into the highly personal matrix of her own family history. The central focus ofthe film isa living portrait of her Swedish family, from great-great-grandpar ents tothe present—her parents, her brothers and sisters, and herself, Simultaneously, she has shifted from an emphasis on herself as an individual to her kinship with the family group: the water which symbolized self-exploration in ‘Moon's Pool becomes the placid lake of Nelson's childhood summers when the family ties were closest. On the level of myth, too, Nelson seeks a new fusion of the personal and the commun this is reflected in the film's rediscovery of tradi tional Scandinavian mythology. For instance, in a recurrent seene, Nelson is teaching her American: born daughter Oona a Swedish children's hand game. As Oona Jearns the game, she enacts the Tinks between tradition and the individual which Nelson is pondering in Trollstenen. The trols of Swedish legend are present too in Gunvor's child: hhood memories of dark forests. They are the linkGUNVOR NELSON between the human family and the natural world ‘which isso central to all of Nelson's films. Nature here, as elsewhere in her work, provides a coun- terpoint to society, an uncontaminated sphere in which the individual can develop freely. Thus when family life becomes too rigid, when tradi tions become oppressive, nature, in the form of the family's lakeside summerhouse, provides a warmer, more intimate, less structured life-style, Again the balance is struck between the personal fand communal needs. But Nelson refuses to ide- Alize her roots; she shows how, in time, individual brothers and sisters struggled to break away from the restrictive closeness of the family, Nelson ‘comments: “I had to free myself from these two strong persons (her mother and father), just because I admired them so much.” Time is an essential dimension of the film, precisely because it provides the room for recon: Gliation of parents and children. The film's sophisticated interweaving of shots from the past (snapshots carefully montaged, home movies, etc.) with footage shot by Nelson during recent visits, emphasizes the links that remain and the separations that were necessary. Nelson's own, ‘career illustrates these dual tensions, for although she was encouraged as an artist by her mother, her full development as a film-maker emenged nly tse the family environment. this with her past, then, Nelson gives evi= dence of her roving sell consclousness as an artist, a fact attested to by the film's many stills of Nelson herself at work filming and editing Trollstenen, the first such shots to appear in her work Nelson's increasing self-awareness is matched by growing public recognition of her work; she has just received a substantial grant from the ‘American Film Institute for her next film. The recognition is long overdue; Nelson isa truly visionary artist whose masterful control of her medium and whose shecr power of imagination should assure her a place in the ranks of the best ‘American experimental film-makers, BLIOGRAPHY Harding, M: Esther, Women’s Mysteries (New York: Bantam, 1979, MacCuloch, ta A., The Mpphalgy of Al Roses. VA. 2 (Gio: Marsal nes, 10).