Andra Takter: Sixten of Anti-Cimex on film


An archival discovery set the internet ablaze in the last couple days. E-mails have been shooting around the globe, followed by eager posts on message boards and blogs. Everyone is so excited about a simply sublime short film released in 1985 that documents some moments in the life of a young punk rocker, Sixten Andersson, who played bass on "Victims of a Bombraid." The flim was posted on a newly opened archival site produced by a Swedish television station.
One pal who e-mailed me about the discovery said this:
"You won't understand much but I have been jacking off to this shit multiple times. I was told about this one late night at Jonsson's place in the mid 90s and Staffan/Really Fast is the only one who I have met who saw it back when."
Although there is no footage of Anti-Cimex playing in it, we do get to see Tomas Jonsson and Sixten listen to a track from "Victims of a Bombraid" on vinyl, presumably for the first time. The stack of mint copies of the single alone is enough to set aflutter the heart of anyone reading this site (and the saliva glands a-flowin'). The bands included are Subhumans (featuring Dick Lucas, my doppelganger) and Peter and the Test Tube Babies, along with a short bit of footage of GBG Punx (including Sixten) rehearsing.
Watch it here.
The highlights are, for me, the shot of Sixten's apartment at 1:52 that features the Discharge/Anti-Cimex gig poster and a picture of Karl Marx; Anti-Cimex graffiti at 9:41; and the shot of Sixten's 7" collection at 8:05. Records visible in the collection are: Eater "Thinking of the USA", Government Issue "Legless Bull", Neos "Hassibah...", two by Subhumans (UK), Kohu-63, Outcasts "Frustration", Uproar "Rebel Youth", Mekons "Never Been in a Riot" (!), and Eu's Arse/Impact split. Just take a moment to let the remifications of that sink in. Deep breath. Also quite amazing is the footage of a protest by Swedish punks against Sweden's exports of armaments.
Another correspondent who wrote me said this:
"Interestingly, since that archivial website opened yesterday the Anti-Cimex film is the second most popular film after a film about SAAB car industry and before a film about some small town tennis club (hah!)."
A google translation of the information on the website:
Title: Andra Takter [Different Notes] (1985)
Sixten is a punk and play in the band Anti Cimex. The film follows him and his friends—young people who do not want to live the ordinary everyday life, they want to party and protest against Swedish arms exports.
Length: 27 minutes
Cast: Sixten Andersson, Marie-Louise Waldestam, Subhumans, Peter and the Test Tube Babies
Director: Benny Frick
Producer: Benny Frick
Screenplay: Benny Frick
Photo: PeO Olsson
Music: Anti-Cimex
Production Country: Sweden
Production Company: Film Frick
Rights: Tenfilm
Starting material: 16 mm, normal picture (1,37:1), optical mono, color
Archives: Swedish Film Institute
Music is often divided up into categories and subcategories. In the late seventies there was a punk explosion in Sweden, which moved quickly into post-punk that was not as uncompromising, but more important for the Swedish music scene in the eighties. But there were those who agreed to remain at hard core punk music and more anarchist ideals of life. In Sweden, a category that is called kängpunk and where the user group Anti-Cimex placed.
This is a brief background to the music of other rates. Though the film is less about kängpunk and the Swedish music scene in the eighties, and more about the two young people who did not feel comfortable with the usual everyday life with work from eight to five. They did not work, they wanted to party and protest against Swedish arms exports. They wanted to go to University and play at a music festival, which among others, the English band Peter and the Test Tube Babies were on the scene.
To voluntarily opt out, that with today's terminology as part of exclusion, was at the time and in the environment is not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes even ideologically rooted. The fear of the ordinary shamble life and the desire to rebel against the older generation is repeated in other Swedish depictions of punk, as Stig Larsson's half-hour documentary Punkrock from 1978 and Johan Donner Ebba—the movie about the punk band Ebba Grön.
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