This essential selection of female experiences on film champions cinema as a personal lens, with formal strategies that also point to specific artistic scenes, from the Bay Area to Boston’s MassArt. Gunvor Neslon’s pioneering use of filmic collage and avant-garde soundscapes are at the core of the surrealist montage Fog Pumas (made in collaboration with Dorothy Wiley) and the eerie childhood portrait My Name Is Oona. A cut-up of a different kind, Handtinting was created by Joyce Wieland after a Job Corps commission filming a West Virginia training center. In vivid hues, and creating a rhythmic sequence from her outtakes, Wieland crafted a second, more subjective film, in which her primarily African American subjects could hold space on their own terms. The program closes with a pair of rousing, punk-inflected artists’ films from the 1990s: Futility, Greta Snider’s disarming juxtaposition of found footage and intimate narratives; and Anne Charlotte Robertston’s unabashedly caustic self-portrait Apologies, which screens in its original small-gauge format. Chantal Akerman, Vivennie Dick, Chick Strand, and Lynne Sachs also figure as notable Cineprobe alumna.
Handtinting. 1967–68. Canada. Directed by Joyce Weiland. 16mm. 6 min.
My Name Is Oona. 1969. USA/Sweden. Directed by Gunvor Nelson. Score by Steve Reich. 16mm. 10 min.
Fog Pumas. 1967. USA. Directed by Gunvor Nelson, Dorothy Wiley. 16mm. 25 min.
Futility. 1989. USA. Directed by Greta Snider. 16mm. 9 min.
Apologies. 1983–90. USA. Directed by Anne Charlotte Robertson. Super 8mm. 17 min.