Now Available: New 2K Digitizations of Three Films by Robert Nelson (and Friends)
Posted July 14th, 2026 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events
Canyon Cinema is pleased to announce that new high-resolution digital files of three films by Robert Nelson, including collaborations with William T. Wiley and Mike Henderson, are now available.
These 2K digitizations of The Off Handed Jape (1967), Worldly Woman (1973), and Suite California Stops & Passes Part 1: Tijuana to Hollywood via Death Valley (1976) are supported by the Interbay Cinema Society’s ICS Grant program. Since its inception in 2016, ICS has given over $200,000 in $1000 grants to filmmakers to have their work digitized at Colormatters, a transfer house based in Seattle.
With thanks to: Caryn Cline (Interbay Cinema Society), Eric Rosen (Colormatters), Oona Nelson, Steve Nelson, Ethan Wiley, Mike Henderson, and Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive).
The Off Handed Jape (Robert Nelson and William T. Wiley, 1967, 9 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
“This film can be of immeasurable aid to would-be actors who are weak in the jape.” (William T. Wiley)
Worldly Woman (Robert Nelson and Mike Henderson, 1973, 7 minutes, color and b&w, sound, digital file)
“A sort of revolutionary triptych. A devotional painting to all things that spin.” (Mark Toscano)
Suite California Stops & Passes Part 1: Tijuana to Hollywood via Death Valley (Robert Nelson, 1976, 46 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
“Suite California is a work of deep feeling, insight, humor, and intelligence which finds Nelson working at the height of his formal innovation, and at the same time, at his most personally revealing and emotionally generous. The Suite California films were originally intended as a much longer, multi-part travelog traversing the wide cultural and geographical diversity of all of California. Nelson completed these two parts – covering Southern California and the Bay Area – and the results trace the vast and unpredictable area between a rich personal reading of a place and the place itself. Although both works feature Nelson’s characteristic brilliant humor throughout, they are also deeply reflective and filled with unexpected, revelatory insight about the subjective experience of his home state, and his own place in it.” (Mark Toscano)
