aemi / Filmform: Landscapes Expanding
Filmform (est in 1950) is Sweden’s only organization dedicated to promotion, preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of Swedish experimental film and video art. As an artist film distributor and for this special programme they have selected a diverse range of landscape films from their extensive catalogue. With films from key figures including Gunvor Nelson, John Skoog, and Claes Söderquist this programme offers a concise overview of their deep catalogue through the frame of landscape.
Filmform’s Andreas Bertman will join us after the screening for a discussion about the role of artist film distributors.
FILM INFO:
Gunvor Nelson, Moons Pool, 1973, 15 min.
John Skoog, Shadowland, 2015, 15 min.
Claes Söderquist, Landskap, 1987, 36 min.
All titles courtesy of Filmform.
Gunvor Nelson, MOONS POOL:
Moons Pool marked a new path in Gunvor Nelson’s filmmaking in which she develops her interest in creating a weave of movements and superimpositions. The film that is mostly shot underwater, in a pool, begins with footage of water and a close-up of Nelson from which we move to her body immersed in water in a bathtub from which yet another transition occurs to a pool with male and female naked bodies swimming underwater. The latter part of the film is almost totally liberated from speech, and has a dreamlike, complex soundtrack consisting of sounds of waves, voices, water and music woven together into a seamless web of sounds.
John Skoog, Shadowland:
The film shows locations in California that have played other parts of the world in early Hollywood films. By revisiting these old locations and documenting them as they look today and by letting the sounds from the film inhabit them, the film reconstructs the Californian landscape as a place outside of time.
Claes Söderquist, Landskap:
Landscape is Söderquist’s first minimalistic film. The slow camera shots show the inertia of nature and the temporality of thoughtfulness. The film is cut in motion to give a coherent structure of movement, a kind of course of events, through a multifaceted landscape of rich ferns, swaying treetops, winding roots alternated with reflections in a rippling stream. Landscape is a focused and tightly formed panorama, whose masterly projection of natural sound and cyclical construction are manifested in seasonal colour and light variations and in flowing water.
About Filmform:
Filmform is one of the oldest organizations in the world devoted to video art and experimental film and was founded in 1950 in Stockholm, Sweden, originally as an independent film co-op. Later it was re-organized into a foundation and is now the most important driving force for artists’ films and videos in Sweden – working with archiving, distribution as well as dissemination of knowledge and information. Filmform is further an important intermediary between independent filmmakers and governmental agencies and is often engaged as an advisor to museums, galleries, universities, and festivals. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers within the field of moving images.
Filmform has its origin in the post-war generation of artists that experienced the cinema as a new and expanding creative field. In film – personal expression, free from the regulations of convention, could maintain its independence. Artists’ films – as well as videos later on – made it possible to connect to the world and to modern times. Filmform has been the hub of artists’ films and videos since several decades. Artists like Viking Eggeling, Peter Weiss and Gunvor Nelson have been important in this process, and new names are merging continuously. It is a beautiful coincidence that the first film that was planned when the association once formed in 1950 was called Vision. The vision of artists moving images is under constant review.
