Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.
In Söderquist’s first film In Tuxedo, playfulness and improvisation are combined with absurd humor. An artist steps into an empty studio and begins assembling objects into a tree-like sculpture. The sculpture is adorned with small white paper clouds, puppets and undefinable items; all the while, the studio fills up with new things: a suitcase, a mirror and formal attire. The artist, now wearing a top hat and tuxedo, paints the paper clouds and the wall in a frenzy of activity, ending with his sitting exhausted in a corner surrounded by the mess he has created. The growing chaos, the various layers of narrative and the music of the soundtrack, which was improvised and recorded live during a viewing of the final film cut, interact in counterpoint.
Claes Söderquist, born 1939 in Stockholm, is a Swedish artist, filmmaker and curator. He was educated at Konstfack in Stockholm during 1960-64 and at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm during 1964-69. He has been active as a filmmaker since the early 1960’s. Among early films we find I frack (1964), Le Génie Civil (1967), together with Jan Håfström, and Travelog. Porträtt – Bilder från en resa (1969). Encounters with jazz and experimental films show at Moderna Museet during the 1960’s were important influences for Söderquist’s emerging artistry. Since then Söderquist has worked in different formats and contexts and has 2013 presented his work in large-scale video installations at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, a show later exhibited at Kristianstad Konsthall.
Close study of landscapes and spatial dynamics have been important for Söderquist, but he also places emphasis on film as a temporal artform. Brev ur tystnaden recounts the German poet Kurt Tucholsky’s exile years in Sweden, told using letters and a filmic scenography consisting of a detailed reconstruction of Tucholsky’s home. Landskap is a close study of a piece of nature with its variables and seasonal shifts, achieved with the aid of an inventive tracking technique and a camera slowly moving through dense vegetation. Söderquist has also in a diptych returned to the prison island Alcatraz; first in The Return of the Buffalo (1970-2012), later in Alcatraz – The Return (2013), using unique interview material, direct contact with the occupiers and a sensitive registration of social, political and architectural layers of the location to create a singular two-part document.
“If my earlier films were a form of collage, the 1960s and ’70s were ruptourous, and I have since reduced my methods of expression and worked more with slow movements. For me, it’s about a feeling of being on the way, of the progression of the image, but also, in this way, examining the environment I am in. As in Landskap, I didn’t want to create any natural poetry; rather I attempted to undress nature, to examine it.” — Söderquist in his own words.
Beyond his artisanship, Söderquist has carried out projects as a film curator. With exhibitions such as Pleasure Dome and Västtysk experimentfilm, shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm 1980 and 1984 respectively, and the extensive Swedish Avantgarde Film 1924-1990, which toured the USA in 1991, he has brought experimental film to the fore in Sweden, but has also spread awareness of Swedish experimental film internationally.
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