ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Joyce Wieland’s and Gunvor Nelson’s histories as filmmakers at a particularly fertile moment of experimental film in the USA, suggesting this was formative for them not only as artists but also as expats and as women in highly masculine artistic experimental spaces. Their position as outsiders, as a Canadian and a Swede, with lived perspectives as women and citizens of welfare states, informed their operations within this American aesthetic milieu. At the same time, they were deeply influenced by the rise of the American avant-garde or underground filmmaking scene, which helped them develop unique formal languages to explore their relationships to their home countries. After considering these foundational experiences, the chapter turn toward the shared aesthetic commonalities in their work and how these are applied to the ways they represent their home countries as a form of return. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the legacies of their work in the 21st century.
