From: programming (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Nov 15 2006 - 10:53:01 PST
Hi All,
For those of you in or near Chicago:
> Chicago Filmmakers, Conversations at the Edge, & The Film Studies Center
> at the University of Chicago Present:
>
>
>
>
>> LIGHT YEARS: FILMS AND VIDEOS BY GUNVOR NELSON
>>
>> Three Special Screenings with Experimental Film Great Gunvor Nelson in Person
>> in a Rare North American Appearance
>>
>> November 16-18, 2006
>>
>>
>> One of the few women to emerge from San Francisco's heady independent film
>> scene of the 1960s, Swedish filmmaker Gunvor Nelson has produced one of the
>> great bodies of work in experimental film. Her films and videos are at once
>> intimate studies of life's emotional landscapes and sensual explorations of
>> image and sound, built up through lush compositions and lyrical montages.
>>
>> 2006 marks Nelson's 40th year as a filmmaker and the Chicago screenings taken
>> together will encompass the range and diversity of her work over her career.
>> From her first film Schmeerguntz (1966, co-made with Dorothy Wiley), which is
>> a critical and deliberately crude attack on idealized femininity to the
>> intensely moving portraits of her young daughter ( My Name Is Oona, 1969) and
>> her dying mother (Time Being, 1991); from poetic ruminations on her native
>> Sweden (Light Years, 1987) and her dynamic use of painting and collage
>> (Natural Features, 1990), to her recent use of digital video to create richly
>> textured landscape pieces full of mystery ( True to Life and New Evidence,
>> both 2006), Nelson has created works that are distinct and exciting. She has
>> become one of the most accomplished and celebrated artists from the
>> avant-garde film world.
>>
>> Chicago Filmmakers, Conversations at the Edge, and the Film Studies Center
>> are proud and excited to welcome this remarkable artist to Chicago.
>>
>> A new catalog on Nelson's work, Evidence, had been published on the occasion
>> of this North American tour. It is available for $10.00 and is currently on
>> sale at Chicago Filmmakers during business hours and will also be on sale at
>> each of the three screenings.
>>
>>
>>
>> SCREENINGS:
>>
>> Program One
>> Thursday, November 16 - 6:00 pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N.
>> State St.)
>> Presented as part of Conversations at the Edge.
>>
>> Schmeerguntz (1966) is a visceral and brash "attack" on notions of idealized
>> femininity.
>>
>> Moon's Pool (1973): "Photographed under water, live bodies are intercut with
>> natural landscapes creating powerful mood changes and images surfaced from
>> the unconscious." (Freude Bartlett)
>>
>> Natural Features (1990) "Perhaps no film has more successfully blended an
>> evident passion for painting with a sensitivity to filmmaking as lush
>> pigments alternate with and punctuate the different photographic layerings."
>> (Steve Anker)
>>
>> New Evidence (2006): "Shadows traveling, women standing, fires blazing, feet
>> walking and over everything water flowing. A lot of water." (Nelson)
>>
>> (82 mins. total, 16mm and Digital Video)
>>
>> Admission: $9.00 general; $7 students; $5.00 Gene Siskel Film Center members
>>
>> Conversations at the Edge is organized by the School of the Art Institute of
>> Chicago's Department of Film, Video, & New Media in association with the
>> Video Data Bank and the Gene Siskel Film Center.
>>
>> ***********************************************************************
>>
>> Program Two
>> Friday, November 17 - 8:00 pm
>> Presented by the Film Studies Center
>> at the University of Chicago
>> (5811 South Ellis Ave. Cobb Hall 307)
>>
>>
>> My Name Is Oona (1969): Perhaps Nelson's most well-known film, Oona is an
>> engaging portrait of her young daughter.
>>
>> Red Shift (1984) "is a meditation on the emotional relationships between
>> three generations of women, explored via daily gestures, everyday events, and
>> disjunctive aural traces. Set in the filmmaker's childhood home in Sweden,
>> the film, made with the assistance of Diane Kitchen, is interwoven with
>> voice-over readings of Calamity Jane's letters to her daughter." (MoMA)
>>
>> Time Being (1991) is a delicate and powerful portrait of Nelson's dying
>> mother.
>>
>> (68 mins. total, 16mm)
>>
>> Admission is free to this screening only.
>>
>> ***********************************************************************
>>
>> Program Three
>> Saturday, November 18 - 8:00 pm
>> Presented by Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
>>
>> True to Life (2006) is a journey into plants, a confrontation between the
>> camera (filmmaker) and a close thriving territory, as well as a confrontation
>> between this closeness and abrupt distance.
>>
>> Light Years (1987): "Nelson blends collage animation with highly textured
>> live-action material to create a haunting evocation of her displacement from
>> her native Swedish culture" (Parabola).
>>
>> Tree-Line (1998): "Travel that only appears to be moving, a kind of
>> repetitious stammering with complex variations in rhyme and locomotion-the
>> image finally arrives, full frame, at a tree." (MoMA)
>>
>> (74 mins. total, 16mm and Digital Video)
>>
>> Admission: $8.00 general; $7.00 students; $4.00 Chicago Filmmakers members
>>
>> ***********************************************************************
>>
>> Additional support for this program has been provided by the Consulate
>> General of Sweden.
>>
>> Chicago Filmmakers programs are supported in part by grants from The National
>> Endowment for the Arts, The MacArthur Fund at the Richard H. Driehaus
>> Foundation, A City Arts 3 Grant from the City of Chicago Department of
>> Cultural Affairs, the Alphawood Foundation and the Gaylord and Dorothy
>> Donnelley Foundation. This program is partially supported by a grant from
>> the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
>>
>>
>>
__________________________________________________________________
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