TAKE OFF

Sweden | 1972 | 10 minutes

“Take off” in English can mean both to remove your clothing and to start flying. Experimental filmmaker Gunvor Nelson’s short plays with this double meaning. A Swedish naturalized American, Nelson moved in 1953 to California, where she settled and became an outstanding representative of avantgarde cinema, especially the movement tied to the San Francisco Canyon Cinema, one of the most prolific and oldest organizations for the distribution of experimental and artists’ films. The short’s structure is extremely simple: in a vibrant black and white, stripper Ellion Ness performs a both playful and sensuous striptease. She winks irreverently at the camera eye, which never gives way to gratuitous voyeurism, but remains an amused partner in the action. Bit by bit, we may be arriving to the obvious conclusion but something unexpected happens. An ironic veer towards an alien, cosmic body, accompanied by a distorted electric sound of synthesizers. (t.p.)