"Moons Pool" is a masterful and lyrical use of the film medium to portray the search for identity and resolution of self. Photographed under water, live bodies are intercut with natural landscapes creating powerful mood changes and images surfaced from the unconscious. (Freude Bartlet)
From 2015 to 2017, Lynne Sachs visited with Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer and Gunvor Nelson, three multi-faceted artists who have embraced the moving image throughout their lives.
‘My name is Oona,’ says the little girl at the beginning of the film and she will repeat it in a loop throughout the movie. ‘Oona’ means: the unique one, the fairy queen. She’s the daughter of filmmaker Gunvor Nelson, who observes her at play in My Name is Oona while reflecting to a certain extent on her own childhood. We experience Oona in her social surroundings, with her fri...
Gunvor Nelson stares intently at her mother Carin, a woman whose body has been devastated by the challenges of her last days on this earth. In three astute shots, Nelson looks with honesty rather than awe at a woman whose spirit has somehow flown away but whose body still demands a share of our time and our space.
This magnus opus is a domestic symphony from a woman's point of view, the portrait of a grandmother, mother and child and their home. The women and their personal objects are mostly seen alone or relating to one another (except for touching scenes of the grandmother and grandfather together). A key aspect of "Red Shift" is the reading of selections from Calamity Jane's "Diaries...