This essay is a presentation and study of the Swedish-American avant-garde film-maker Gunvor Nelson’s remarkable production of five diverse animation films from the years 1983 to 1990. The films were produced during the final breakthrough of video art and the decline of American avant-garde film. At the time Nelson was an American citizen, but most of her actual work on the films took place in her native country, Sweden. Nevertheless, the primary culture and context of the work was the United States.

The essay claims that Nelson’s collage films of the 1980s challenge not only some principles of avant-garde film but also the status of the avant-garde film institution as the films coincide with the transformation of avant-garde film into video art and thus the emergence of a new institutional apparatus. The significance of her films as avant-garde acts lies in their status as film-based media and their transgressive aesthetics. Thus they challenge an art world marked by the commercialisation of digital video.