Peter 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.

Surrealistic images of Faust-Mephisto in his fantastic laboratory.

A documentary film about the 99 year old artist Anna Casparsson. She is interviewed by Peter Weiss in her home in Saltsjöbaden. “I shot 'Anna Casparsson' together with Staffan Lamm. I had wanted to complete the film, but somehow I did not get around to it and then she died shortly afterwards.” -Peter Weiss

A short pamphlet based on a text by Peter Weiss and on the contrapuntal use of the relation between image and sound. The commercial activities and fantasies linked to tourism in Sweden are contradicted by the geopolitics of capitalist imperialism, in particular with the war in Vietnam.

About everyday life and the recurrent dangers in the big city.

Peter Weiss’ monumental 1965 stage play, among the greatest artworks on the Holocaust, condenses the testimonies of witnesses and the accused during the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963-1965. This ultra-faithful film adaptation builds, across four hours, in its intensity and graphically described detail.

The day begins for an avant-garde artist. We see him waking up amid empty bottles, easels, and silk stockings.

A surrealistic and symbolic depiction of the liberation of the self in a series of associative scenes. The main character moves between different rooms, rooms of significance for him, dragging something that constantly changes form but eventually turns out to be himself. It is an old and consumed I that disappears from him.

The immense population increase in Copenhagen mid of the 20th century requested new living space further from the city centre. The old town quarters of the danish capital offered neither enough space nor did they provide a life close to nature which was required especially by families with many children. Based on the so called „finger plan” from 1947 Copenhagen was enlarged along five radial traffic axes. Using the example of the estates Carlsrø in Rodøvre and Milestedet in Brøndbyøster "Bag de ens facader" documents life in a modern suburb.

Deals with young people dealing and using drugs of all kind.

Sequences of photographic abstractions have been balanced against more realistic sections. A surrealistically charged encounter between two lovers, a young woman and a man.