Peter Weiss
Short Film Collection
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Add rightsFormat Blu-ray Interzone
Original format 16mm, 35mm
Year 1952-1961
Language(s) Swedish
Artist(s) Peter Weiss
Subtitles English, French
Authors Jon Wengström, Martin Grennberger, Stefan Ramstedt, Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss
Booklet 44 pages
Running time 132 min
Films
STUDIE I: UPPVAKNANDET (1952) 6'
STUDIE IL: HALLUCINATIONER (1952) 5'
STUDIE III (1953) 5'
STUDIE IV: FRIGÖRELSE (1954) 8'
STUDIE V: VÄXELSPEL (1955) 8'
ANSIKTEN I SKUGGA (1956) 13'
ATELJÉINTERIÖR (1956) 9'
INGENTING OVANLIGT (1957) 9'
ENLIGT LAG (1957) 18'
VAD SKA VI GÖRA NU DÅ (1958) 20'
TAGNING NARKOMANER (1960) 6'
ANNA CASPARSSON (1960) 13'
TAGNING ÖYVIND FAHLSTRÖM (1961) 12'
Description
"Peter Weiss (1916-1982) was a celebrated German-Swedish author and playwright, best known for his play Marat-Sade. His literary fame overshadowed his work as a surrealist painter and avant-garde filmmaker. Superficial reality is brought to yield suggestive images that become as solid, as certain, and as fascinating as the object itself. The consistency of these images—hallucinations, dreams, the ravings of madmen—would later become a recurring characteristic of Weiss's work. In his surrealist film Hallucinationer (1953), Weiss indulges in a complex visual play on the interchangeability of image and reality."
— Roger Ellis
"[In Enligt Lag] he captures the stark exterior and bleak interior of the building from unexpected angles. These sequences give an evocative image of the power structure inherent in the architecture of the prison environment. The prisoners in the film are transformed into an anonymous mass devoid of any identity. Weiss was thus able to concretely illustrate how punishment eradicates human dignity."
— Sverker R. Ek
"Ansikten i skugga follows the actions and movements of vagrants in Stockholm over the course of a day, without commentary, without an overarching point of view, without explanation. The film's program sticks to its title: to seek out faces, to restore the shadow from which they do not emerge. The iterative and synthetic nature of the treatment of poverty thus combines minimal description with a quasi-ethnographic aim, respect for the filmed subjects, and political assertion."
— Nicole Brenez