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 Letters From Silence portrays the reconstructed home of the German writer Kurt Tucholsky. He was a left-wing democrat of Jewish heritage, a pacifist 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. With unconventional austerity, slow travelling shots of details and empty rooms, (a form recognized from the earlier film Landscape), along with the bitter tone of the letters, Claes Söderquist conveys the existential emptiness and exclusion that exile from Germany meant for Kurt Tucholsky.
Born in 1939. Studied painting at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Works as a curator and film maker. Lives in Stockholm. Chairman of Filmform’s board 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).
Söderquist has also exhibited his own films and video works at the Center of Contemporary Art in Kristianstad (2014) and a solo exhibition of his work was presented at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Stockholm 2013). His films have been screened at Avant (Karlstad 2006), Moderna Museet (Stockholm 2012) and Turbidus Film (Stockholm 2014).
To find out more about Söderquist: OEI #69-70: On Film (2015), Magasinet Walden (2012 i valfiskens buk), Passager (catalogue, two volumes, 2013)
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