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.
The film Le Génie Civil consists of numerous etchings and photogravure prints from an engineering journal, illustrating the advancement of industrialism in the late 1800’s. The filmed illustrations are allowed to speak for themselves as still images during a prolonged cinematic time, a kind of viewing time. In a reciprocal and dense interaction with a collage of noise from trains, rain, thunder, a ticking clock and organ music, the material is brought to life and the narrative of the film slowly emerges. Because the images in Le Génie Civil are taken out of their original context and placed in another time and space, they link the past with an ongoing present.
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.
Jan Håfström
Jan Håfström studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and is one of his generation’s most acclaimed painters and sculptors. Additionally, Håfström has also worked with film as an artform since the 1960’s where he has both directed and participated in several films.
Together with Claes Söderquist he made the short film Le Génie Civil in 1967, which consists of stills from technical journals from the 19th century. This consideration of Western technology optimism and the emergence of modernity gained a commendation in the Orient that Håfström did on his own that same year. Together, the two films explore and thematize memory and history writing, where the Eurocentric worldview is exposed to dissection.
Jan Håfström has said that he learned to dream in the cinemas, and the film’s suggestion power can also be seen as a recurring motif in his painting and graphics, where the popular culture templates are reused to make a journey into the interior of the western civilization. One of Håfström’s favorite references is Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, and like his protagonist Marlowe, he has made a journey into the painful points of memory.
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