Canyon Cinema presents Robert Nelson’s Suite California, October 30, 2024

Posted October 3rd, 2024 in Announcements, Events and Screenings, News / Events

Robert Nelson’s Suite California
Wednesday, October 30, 6:30pm
The Roxie Theater, San Francisco

Program & Ticket Info: roxie.com/film/robert-nelsons-suite-california-16mm/

Canyon at The Roxie returns this fall with a special presentation of Robert Nelson’s majestic two-part 16mm film essay, Suite California!

“I’m definitely not interested in passing along intellectual information about California. There’s plenty of that everywhere. I’m trying to get at some feeling state.” — Robert Nelson, from A Critical Cinema (1988), by Scott MacDonald

“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… 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, Academy Film Archive

Screening line-up:

Suite California Stops & Passes Part 1: Tijuana to Hollywood via Death Valley (Robert Nelson, 1976, 46 minutes, 16mm)

Suite California Stops & Passes Part 2: San Francisco to the Sierra Nevadas & Back Again (Robert Nelson, 1978, 47 minutes, 16mm)

Approximate running time: 93 minutes

About Robert Nelson

“Known for his offbeat humor and prankster experimentalism, the films of San Francisco native Robert Nelson (1930–2012) are among the defining markers of the American experimental film scene of the 1960s and 70s. Nelson’s free-spirited approach and sharp wit powered collaborations with Mike Henderson, William T. Wiley and Steve Reich, among many others. The raucous eccentricity of his early films communicates something of the 60s spirit that he shared with Beat-influenced Bay Area artist friends. As Bruce Weber wrote in the New York Times obituary, Nelson “brought spontaneity, teasing, and wit to the often deadly serious arena of avant-garde moviemaking.” Born in 1930 to a family of Swedish immigrants, Robert Nelson studied painting until changing his focus to concentrate on filmmaking in the early 1960s. Strong influences included the Bay Area bohemian Beat scene and the improvisatory theatre of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, with which he would ultimately collaborate on several films. His marriage to experimental filmmaker Gunvor Nelson also helped jumpstart his early filmmaking impulse and instigated many films. Nelson worked at various jobs throughout his life, including taxi driving and underwater welding, and eventually teaching film at various institutions, including the San Francisco Art Institute and University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. An active participant in the Bay Area arts movement, Nelson was involved in co-founding the independent distribution company Canyon Cinema in 1966. His influence on filmmaking, art and culture was far- reaching—inspiring filmmakers such as Peter Hutton, Fred Worden and Curt McDowell.” – Jeremy Rossen, Harvard Film Archive