Schmeerguntz (1965)

Interesting facts

Schmeerguntz is a 1965 American avant-garde film by Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley. It is a collage film that contrasts messy depictions of domestic life with the pristine images of women found in media and advertising. The film was an inspiration for the Miss America protest that happened in 1968.

Production

Nelson and Wiley decided to make a film before they had a subject in mind. Nelson had the idea while looking at the sink in her house and thinking about the contrast between how she actually spent her time and how images in media suggested people spend their time. Neither had worked with a camera before, so Nelson's husband Robert spent half an hour showing them how to operate one.

They shot footage of dirty or grimy objects around the house. As they were filming, they came to observe a contrast between the unpleasantness of their subjects and the appeal of seeing them documented visually. Wiley was pregnant while they were shooting, and Schmeerguntz shows her vomiting from morning sickness, struggling to fit into a garter belt, and wiping feces from her infant's behind.

Nelson and Wiley had their footage developed and began editing Schmeerguntz. Since this was their first time working on a film, they did not provide any instructions to the lab for timing the film or other work. Their editing style consisted of rapid montage that combines their original footage with images from TV, movies, newsreels, and photo animations.

The soundtrack is similarly busy, incorporating music, dialogue, and voice-over narration. Nelson and Wiley cut between the different sources without any sound mixing.

The film's title comes from a nonsensical Germanic-sounding language Nelson's father used. In it, schmeerguntz referred to a sandwich.

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