Landskap

Claes Söderquist, Landskap, 1987, 36 min. Courtesy of Filmform.

Landskap is 36 minutes of camera shots sliding through the landscape of a forest of Skåne in the south of Sweden during different seasons of the year. 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. It was made in 1987 and it was Söderquist's first minimalistic film. 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. (Listen to the sound in the soundshower close to the entrance door to the atrium.)

“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.” Claes Söderquist

The screening of Landskap is part of the Filmprogram x2 curated by Anna-Karin Larsson and Andreas Bertman at Filmform. The Filmform program will be screened throughout the fall at SSE, and it is a program showing two films by the same artist during the same month - one on the big screen in the atrium and one on lill-skärmen in the north corridor on the groundfloor. 

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. Filmform is supported by the Ministry of Culture through the Arts Grants Committee.

Claes Söderquist, born 1939 in Stockholm, is a Swedish artist, filmmaker and curator. He was educated at Konstfack in Stockholm and at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm during the 1960s. 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 shown at the small corridor on the ground floor of SSE) .

Encounters with jazz and experimental films shown at Moderna Museet during the 1960’s were important influences for Söderquist’s emerging artistry. 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.