Robert Nelson Movies

"Even when we know the game is an illusion, the experience of Bleu Shut is entirely a pleasure: the ‘game’ is fun, the Nelson/Wiley...

Commissioned by the San Francisco Mime Troupe as a short to be screened during intermission for its rather infamous 1965 Minstrel Show (Civil Rights...

The Off-Handed Jape is an afternoon’s lark made by Nelson and his artist friend William Wiley. The two men perform whimsical actions and poses...

“When Picasso died I wanted to make the first post-mortem documentary, as I knew would happen anyway, and cheaply. The film took four hours to...

"Dada-inspired performance in which absurd actions take place in an environment of strange symbols and graphic forms." -Mark Webber. Design by...

The first part of what was intended to be a three-part experimental travelog for Nelson’s home state of California, this film covers the...

A continuous dissolve of 87 male and female nudes. "The film's fascination lies with the suspense of that magic moment, halfway between two persons,...

Nelson sets minimal, repetitive imagery against a looping recording of his daughter Oona, which goes gradually from sweet to curious to mysterious to...

A ‘film wake’. Though celebratory in mood, it has a mournful subtext… death and dying. We dedicated it to Dr. Sam West, departed...

“In their starkly minimal film, The Awful Backlash, directors Robert Nelson and William Allan, focus solely on a pair of hands as they begin to...

[1970/2003, color, 7.5 min] Experimental short film preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

Shooting in 1966 without script, story, or any narrative preconception, Nelson and Wiley created a masterwork of ‘60s independent cinema. The...

Recurrent themes of violence, sex and TV commercials. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2004.

A chaotic film featuring the Grateful Dead. The songs that are included are Sitting on Top of the World, Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Cold Rain...

A film by Robert Nelson

A black-and-white travel journal, in which the themes of memories and their relationship to the past suddenly catch up and rush away from us. The...

A feature-length documentary directed by Dorothy Wiley and Gunvor Nelson about five working San Francisco artists: William T. Wiley, Robert Hudson,...

A film by Robert Nelson

A film by Robert Nelson

A film by Robert Nelson