Join us for a special premiere night together with filmmaker Claes Söderquist, who will present his new work Rum, completed in the spring of 2025.
The event will open with a 16mm screening of Söderquist’s defining 1989 film Brev ur tystnaden (Letters From Silence), which reconstructs the presence and channels the voice of German writer and pacifist Kurt Tucholsky during his exile in Sweden in the mid-1930s. Brev ur tystnaden resonates deeply with Rum, and the new film follows a similar structure as it’s austere, slow-moving tracking shots unfold richly detailed imagery of empty space and loss. The dense and virtuosic Baroque composition of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644–1705) heightens the film’s sense of departure, lending Rum the character of a cinematic requiem.
PLEASE NOTE:
The screening is held at Bio Aspen (Hägerstensvägen 100A, Stockholm) on Tuesday, September 9th. Doors open at 18.00, the screening starts at 18.30 PM. No entry fee but limited amount of seats. RSVP to info@filmform.com in order to book a ticket. First come, first served.
PROGRAMME:
Claes Söderquist, Brev ur tystnaden (Letters From Silence), 1989, 40 min. Shown on a 16mm print from the Filmform archive – sound track with Swedish speaker, no English subtitles.
In Letters From Silence portrays the reconstructed home of the German writer Kurt Tucholsky – a left-wing democrat of Jewish heritage and antimilitarist who lived in exile in Sweden between 1932 and 1935. In letters written to his friends Hedvig Muller and Walter Hasenclever, Tucholsky warned of anti-democratic tendencies in politics, the military and the judicial system in Sweden and Germany as well as the rest of Europe, but also of the current threat of Nazism. In his home in Hindås in Sweden, Tucholsky stopped writing books in 1932, choosing silence until taking his life in 1935.
Claes Söderquist, Rum, 2025, 23:30 min. Digital projection. Sound track with no spoken dialogue.
In his latest film Rum, Söderquist revisits footage from the shooting of Letters From Silence, placing them in dialog with recently shot footage. Deploying split-screen for the first time, Söderquist’s camera slowly and meticulously travels through sparse interior spaces and passages, evoking both a sense of enclosure and departure. The internal tensions, motions, correspondences and temporal dynamics between the two screens unfolding is set to Baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Mystery Sonatas, and with its final passacaglia for solo violin – while the camera travels along a corridor –is an apt and ingenious testimony of Söderquist’s continuing explorations of the cinematographic in relation to sound and space.
Total running time: 64 min (+ introduction and closing discussions)
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:
Claes Söderquist (b. 1939) studied painting at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in the early 1960’s. Works as a curator and filmmaker. Lives in Stockholm. Chairman of Filmform’s board between 1999–2012. Söderquist has curated several comprehensive exhibitions at Moderna Museet in Stockholm: “The Pleasure Dome”, American Experimental Film 1939-1979 (1980 in collaboration with Jonas Mekas), Nordic Film (1983), West German Experimental Film (1985 in collaboration with Birgit Hein) and Swedish Avantgarde Film 1924–1990 (tour in the US in collaboration with Jonas Mekas and Anthology Film Archives in New York).
Programme:
Works distributed by Filmform
Landskap
Claes Söderquist
1987, 00:36:00
