German-born Peter Weiss (1916-82) fled with his family to Sweden from Bohemia in Czechoslovakia in the 1930’s to escape Nazi occupation, and became one of the central figures of Svensk Experimentfilmstudio, founded in 1950 to produce and promote experimental film in Sweden (later renamed Arbetsgruppen för Film, now Filmform).

A multimedia artist — painter, writer, graphic artist, playwright, and filmmaker — Weiss made his film debut in the early 1950s with the series of black-and-white shorts titled Studies I-V (1952-55), in which he drew on the tradition of surrealism and avant-garde filmmaking from the 1920s in his depictions of the body, hypnagogic states, and the distressed and liberation-seeking human condition. This was followed up by the more elaborate Ateljéinteriör (1956), his only work in color, in which prisms, mirrors and reflections of light, bodily and spatial distortions, and the use of musique concrète enhance its hallucinatory dynamics. The same year he also published a book gathering his thoughts on experimental filmmaking, Avantgardefilm, written in Swedish, and later translated into French and German.

In the latter half of the 1950s, Weiss also started to make short films with more documentary content. In Ansikten i skugga / Faces in Shadow (1956) he portrays outcasts in Gamla Stan, the oldest part of Stockholm, and Ingenting ovanligt / Nothing Unusual (1957) is a commissioned film about a traffic incident which the filmmaker turns into a poetic portrait of the city. Together with arguably his strongest short Enligt lag / According to Law (1957) — a depiction of life in a juvenile prison — these films give stunning testimony to Weiss’ eye for detail and ability to find human dignity even in the most difficult circumstances. These works avoid using voice-over as a directorial device, instead relying on spatial fragmentation, close attention to details and objects, and a sparse but extremely effective and honed use of sound, clatter, and voices. After his feature-length film Hägringen / The Mirage (1959), a highly personal take on the city symphony genre, Weiss participated in the production of the fiction feature Svenska flickor i Paris / Swedish Girls in Paris (Barbro Boman, 1961), and made a film in Denmark about anonymity and conformity in modern suburbia (Bag de ens facader / Behind the Same Facades, 1961). During these years, Weiss also worked on a bigger project portraying artists and nonconformist people in what he called “sketches,” such as the 99 year old textile artist Anna Casparsson (Anna Casparsson, 1960), a drug addict (Tagning Narkomaner / Film Takes on Drug Addicts, 1960) and the polymath artist Öyvind Fahlström (Film Takes on Öyvind Fahlström,1961). All of these were made in close collaboration with filmmaker Staffan Lamm.

Weiss is generally better known for his literary work as a novelist and playwright, particularly in Germany. His magnum opus is the epic anti-fascist novel/manifesto Die Ästhetik des Widerstand / The Aesthetics of Resistance published in 1981, and his most famous play is Marat/Sade from 1964, later adapted for the screen by Peter Brook. Arbetsgruppen för Film evolved in 1972 into Stiftelsen Filmform / The Art Film & Video Archive, which today distributes experimental films on 16mm and in digital formats. Filmform also acts as the rights holder to Weiss’ short films on behalf of the Weiss family.

– Martin Grennberger and Jon Wengström