Intimate Politics: Carolee Schneemann, Gunvor Nelson, JoAnn Elam

Canyon Cinema and the Carolee Schneemann Foundation present the West Coast premiere of
newly restored 16mm prints of Schneemann’s Plumb Line and Viet-Flakes, in a program of five
landmark films of feminist experimental cinema from the 1960s through the 1980s. Together,
these films show how found footage and personal imagery can be harnessed for dynamic
investigations of memory, politics, and sexuality.

In Viet-Flakes (1962–67), Carolee Schneemann confronts media images of the Vietnam War,
transforming spectacle into a searing critique of violence. Fuses (1964–67) reclaims the sexual
encounter as a subject for women’s authorship, as the artist insists on the body’s material
presence by painting, baking, and burning directly onto the celluloid. With Plumb Line
(1968–71), Schneemann turns her collage strategies toward the raw aftermath of love’s
dissolution.

Gunvor Nelson’s My Name Is Oona (1969) layers her daughter’s voice, looped in collaboration
with Steve Reich, over kaleidoscopic images of childhood, producing a hypnotic meditation on
identity and memory. JoAnn Elam’s Lie Back and Enjoy It (1982) stages a dialogue between a
male filmmaker and a female subject, dissecting the power dynamics of representation itself.

Guest-programmed by Rachel Churner, director of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation. Films
preserved through the National Film Preservations Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant
program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
Additional support for the new prints provided by Electronic Arts Intermix and Anthology Film
Archives.

Screening Line-up:

Viet-Flakes (Carolee Schneemann, 1962-67, 8.5 min, b/w, sound, 16mm)

Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, 1964-67, 29 min, color, silent, 16mm)

Plumb Line (Carolee Schneemann, 1968-71, 14.5 min, color, sound, 16mm)

My Name Is Oona (Gunvor Nelson, 1969, 10 min, b/w, sound, 16mm)

Lie Back and Enjoy It (JoAnn Elam, 1982, 8 min, b/w, sound, 16mm)

Approximate Running Time: 70 minutes

Q&A with Rachel Churner to follow

About Rachel Churner

Rachel Churner is the director of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation. She is also an art critic and editor and was a recipient of the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Recent editorial projects include The New Television: Video After Television (with Rebecca Cleman and Tyler Maxin, 2024); Catherine Lord’s The Effect of Tropical Light on White Men (2023, named in “Top Ten Art Books of the Year” by the New York Times); Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) (2022); Yvonne Rainer: Revisions (2020); and two volumes of writings by film historian Annette Michelson (2017 and 2020). Churner is a faculty member at Eugene Lang College at The New School, New York. 

About Carolee Scheemann Foundation

The Carolee Schneemann Foundation is dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy of Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019), an artist who explored subjectivity, the erotic and taboo, images of atrocity, and the social construction of the female body. Established by the artist in 2013, the Foundation advances the understanding of Schneemann’s work through scholarship, exhibitions, and publications. Over the next few years, the Foundation will establish a residency program at Schneemann’s home in upstate New York in order to support artists whose work shares Schneemann’s commitment to new methods of aesthetic experimentation.