Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss

A young man comes to Stockholm, Sweden and experiences several bizarre and surrealistic situations.

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

In this preliminary study for Study IV “Liberation” a man hauls his alter ego through various spaces. The scene is reminiscent of Luis Buñuel’s “An Andalusian Dog”, where the man drags along a piano, two priests, and two dead donkeys. Weiss was not happy with this first, more personal version. He gave up the attempt to re-edit it.

Filmed for television, this production adapts Molière’s Dom Juan (or The Feast with the Statue), following the final days of the libertine Dom Juan Tenorio as he seduces, deceives, and provokes those around him. His servant Sganarelle serves as a constant companion and observer, accompanying Dom Juan toward the reckoning implied by the play’s statue motif.

We are at Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss home for one afternoon. A question about Peter Weiss’ drawing Parade is the starting point for this conversation. The drawing came into being during the post-war period when Peter Weiss became interested in reproducing his feeling of freedom from his childhood through circus motifs. Ingela Johansson found Parade in Södertälje municipality's art collection.

The working class girl from Landala, Gothenburg, through the fine art of theatre and all the way to Hollywood.