My Name Is Oona (1969)

Gunvor Nelson chose to create a haunting, intensely lyrical evocation of her daughter's inner and outer worlds. The film consists of looped sound, elliptical cutting, slow motion, and superimpositions which construct a dream world in which Nelson's daughter plays, at one with nature. The child moves through rhythmically changing scenes, on to the meaning of letting go, respective harnessing the inherent power of life.
A series of extremely brief flashes of her moving through night-lit space or woods in sensuous negative, separated by rapid fades into blackness, burst upon us like a fairy-tale princess, with a late sun only partially outlining her and the animal in silvery filigree against the encroaching darkness. Throughout the entire film, the girl, compulsively and as if in awe, repeats her name, until it becomes a magic incantation of self-realization.




The film creates an unsettling rather than an idealized portrait of childhood: Gunvor Nelson doesn't want this film was a normal, cute picture of Oona; he think the world Oona was in and Gunvor Nelson own childhood world are combined there. As a child, you're pretty secure in your known world, but the rest is very mysterious and scary; maybe there are monsters and trolls lurking out there, even if you've never seen them.