- Born
- Died
- Robert Nelson was born on March 1, 1930 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was a director and writer, known for Confessions of a Black Mother Succuba (1965), Oh Dem Watermelons (1965) and Plastic Haircut (1963). He was married to Gunvor Nelson. He died on January 9, 2012 in Laytonville, California, USA.
- SpouseGunvor Nelson (divorced, 1 child)
- He studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute (formerly known as the California School of Fine Arts) in San Francisco, California and at Mills College in Berkeley, California. He was trained as a painter when he became active in the San Francisco arts scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He began making movies with other painters, William T. Wiley and William Allan, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the composer, Steve Reich.
- He is survived by his sons, Steve Nelson and Miles Nelson and daughter Oona Nelson. He was married and divorced four times.
- He taught film-making at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
- [on his first film] I had 2,000 feet of film after we shot it, and it looked very poor - only because it was repetitious and long. I struggled with the footage for weeks. No matter what I did, it seemed boring. In desperation, I started cutting shots shorter and shorter, and when I saw the energy that put into the film, I have my first real revelation about cutting.
- The artists I knew at that time felt pretty genuinely that if the process got too heavy or ponderous or worried, if you weren't having a good time at least part of the time, something was wrong. We were bent on having a good time.
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