My Name Is Oona

Born in Sweden in 1931, Gunvor Nelson in 1953 moved to the U.S. where she spent the middle years of her life before moving back to Sweden in the early 1990s. She taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1970-92, influencing a generation of new filmmakers. She carved out a distinctive niche in underground avant-garde American film during the 1960s and '70s though Nelson strongly prefers the term "personal cinema." Much of her work during this period concerns perceptions of feminine beauty.

In My Name is Oona, Nelson paints an expressive portrait of her 9-year-old daughter's flowing, dreamlike interactions with the forces of nature via experimental techniques such as the superimposition of fleeting images, dynamic editing and slow-motion cinematography. The sublime effect created in Oona provides a lyrical, 10-minute look into the non-linear, vivid, sometimes wild or scary world of childhood memory and imagination, as well as a child's halting steps toward self-realization.

My Name Is Oona was added to the National Film Registry in 2019.