Peter Weiss : Short Film Collection - Blu-ray

Peter Weiss (1916-1982) was a celebrated German/ Swedish author and playwright, known especially for his stage play “Marat/Sade.” His literary fame overshadowed his work as a surrealist painter and avant-garde filmmaker. Surface reality is made to yield suggestive images which become as firm, as certain and as tantalising as the object itself. The solidity of image—hallucinations, dreams, madmen’s ravings—later became a recurrent feature of Weiss’ work. In his surrealistic 1953 film, Hallucinations, Weiss played an intricate visual game on the interchangeability of image and reality.
-ROGER ELLIS

[In Enligt Lag] he records the building’s bare exterior and drab interior from unexpected angles. The sequences give an evocative picture of the power structure built into the architecture of the prison environment. The prisoners in the film are transformed into an anonymous and disembodied mass. This allowed Weiss to concretely illustrate how punishment erases human dignity.
-SVERKER R. EK

Faces in Shadow follows the actions of homeless people in Stockholm over the course of a day, without commentary, without an overhanging viewpoint, without explanation. The film’s agenda stays true to its title: to search for faces, to restore the shadows from which they do not emerge. The iterative, synthetic nature of the treatment of misery thus combines minimal description with a quasi-ethnographic vocation, respect for the filmed subjects and political affirmation.
-NICOLE BRENEZ

FILMS
Studie I: Uppvaknandet (Study I / The Awakening) 1952, b/w, 6 min
Studie Il: Hallucinationer (Study Il / Hallucinations) 1952, b/w, 5 min
Studie III (Study III) 1953, b/w, 5 min, silent
Studie IV: Frigörelse (Study IV / Relief) 1954, b/w, 8 min
Studie V: Växelspel (Study V / Interplay) 1955, b/w, 8 min
Ansikten i skugga (Faces in Shadow) 1956, b/w, 13 min
Ateljéinteriör (The Studio of Dr. Faust) 1956, color, 9 min
Ingenting ovanligt (Nothing Unusual) 1957, b/w, 9 min
Enligt lag (According to Law) 1957, b/w, 18 min
Vad ska vi göra nu då (What Shall We Do Now) 1958, b/w, 20 min
Tagning narkomaner 1960, b/w, 6 min, silent
Anna Casparsson 1960, b/w, 13 min
Tagning Öyvind Fahlström 1961, b/w, 12 min, silent

Including 44-page EN/FR booklet: Interview with Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss Texts by Jon Wengström, Martin Grennberger, Stefan Ramstedt