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- Diurlin, Lars
(författare)
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"Filmreformens förste avantgardist" : Experimentfilmaren Peter Kylberg
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is about the Swedish filmmaker, painter and composer Peter Kylberg (1938–). The study examines how Swedish film-cultural and film-political actors interacted with Kylberg in his ambition to create a particular type of expression in the film medium. Thus, not only Kylberg stands in focus, but also the surrounding film-cultural and film-political climate that Kylberg related to. Kylberg’s nine productions produced between the years 1959 and 1996 serves as a historical delimitation. The approach of the dissertation is essentially chronological, as it enables a presentation of Kylberg’s artistry as an emerging development process. The bulk of the source material which constitutes the basis of the study comprises unprocessed primary sources from public and private archives as well as articles and reviews from the daily press and trade press.A purpose of the study, with Kylberg as a point of departure, is to critically review the existing historical writing surrounding Swedish film culture and film politics, during the years Kylberg was active. The dissertation is also a study of the type of expression that Kylberg tried to convey, as well as a discussion of what can be said to construe Kylberg’s concept of art. The study revolves around two problem areas which can be summarized in the words position and expression. These areas deal with Kylberg’s prerequisites as an artist and his aesthetics respectively. Kylberg’s experimental films were generally state funded and produced by major film companies for commercial exhibition. They were thus included into a film culture which essentially encompassed narrative films in feature-length format. An argument that carries through the study is that positioning Kylberg as a filmmaker is problematic. A classic romanticized definition of the avant-gardist experimental filmmaker, arguing for a clear polarization between autonomous avant-garde film and commercial industry, does not fit Kylberg. In the study, he is therefore categorized as a within-industry experimental filmmaker sandwiched between the two seemingly separated spheres “minor” and “major cinemas” – a conceptual apparatus mainly developed by film scholar David E. James.Kylberg was seen by several contemporary critics as a “traditional” modernist. The dissertation fixes on this track and argues for a reading of Kylberg as a belated modernist. Kylberg’s artistic activity is discussed as an extension – or reflection – of various modernistic approaches and perspectives, which linked several of the experimental films and synthesized art’s pioneers in the 1910s and 1920s. Furthermore, Kylberg’s films have striking similarities to a number of the trends, genres and approaches that several experimental film researchers have identified as characteristic of experimental films, mainly European and American, in the 1900s – such as city symphonies, trance films, exile films, diary films, structural films and expanded cinema. The comparison between Kylberg’s work and expressions in earlier and contemporary experimental films make it possible to see his artistry in the light of an international experimental film context.Furthermore, the study wishes to demonstrate that the basic conditions for Kylberg’s position, can be derived from a number of cultural-political reforms which took shape during the beginning of the 1960s. Emphasized in the dissertation is the dependency relationship between Kylberg and a number of cultural-political actors, which were crucial in allowing Kylberg to place minority expressions within the framework of such a resource-dependent art form as the studio-produced nationally and internationally, marketed and theatrically screened film. The dissertation studies the film artist’s role in the Swedish welfare state and problematizes the avant-garde concept in this specific context. The study argues that Kylberg’s production conditions were directly related to a Social Democratic overall culture policy goal to promote the production of what the representatives of the implemented policy called “cultural benefits”. In 1966 a film critic identified Kylberg as “The first avant-gardist of the film reform” – a categorization that tells us something decisive about Kylberg’s social role as a film artist. If he were an avant-gardist he was neither his own, nor his artistic medium’s avant-gardist, but the cultural policy reform’s. Throughout the study, Kylberg functions as an indicator of which of the institutions of the Swedish welfare state were at the time able to finance, or not finance, the kind of experimental expression he wished to create. It can be said that the acceptance of these institutions gave Kylberg an artistically legitimate, as well as economically possible, front-runner position as one of the welfare state’s sanctioned avant-gardists.
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- Åberg, Anders
(författare)
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Tabu : Filmaren Vilgot Sjöman
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is a thematic and historical analysis of of Sjöman’s œuvre and its significance for Swedish film culture, focussing on his most important films during the 1960s and 1970s. Sjöman started as a novelist in the late 1940s, and has since then accomplished an œuvre consisting of some 60 works, mostly novels, plays, essays, and films. Sjöman is best known as a film director. In 1962, Sjöman’s first film, Älskarinnan (The Mistress), opened to great acclaim. Sjöman was greeted as the instigator of a new wave of Swedish cinema, comparable to the French Nouvelle vague and post-war Italian cinema. Other Swedish author-directors followed Sjöman’s lead. Through the debate on censorship inspired by the official banning of Sjöman’s film 491, Sjöman became known as a serious, but utterly controversial film-maker, treating sexual matters in a provocative and explicit manner. His international fame rests mainly on the diptych film, Jag är nyfiken – gul (I Am Curious – Yellow), and Jag är nyfiken – blå (I Am Curious – blue), from 1967 and 1968 respectively. Sjöman here launched a kind of cinéma vérité-aesthetic, combined with a self-reflexive cinematic discourse verging on self-parody. At the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s, Sjöman struggled to find his proper place in the politicised cultural climate. The title of this thesis is derived from a film released in 1977, Tabu (Taboo). The film was scandalous, its allegory of leftist political activism deemed unacceptable. After Tabu, Sjöman never really recovered as a director. His films tended to be unattractive for the general audience, and, as opposed to his earlier work, they have had no real impact on the discourses of Swedish contemporary cinema and culture in general.
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- Fossås, Ole Johnny, 1987-
(författare)
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Extracting versatility : Films commissioned by the mining industry in postwar Sweden
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study investigates how films commissioned by Swedish mining companies were employed for institutional use between 1945 and 1965. A central aspect of what gave these films their versatility stems from circumstances that allowed commissioned texts to pass as non-partisan audiovisual aids, as educational and informative instruments and as occasional examples of film art through intermediaries. In detaching texts from the biases of commissioning bodies, these films were treated as instrumental – and occasionally artistically valuable – texts on mining, in relation to work management and Sápmi contexts. Because these commissioned films blended in with established institutions, rather than offering a radical voice in society, they became sources for knowledge about how and which forms of audiovisual communication on industry were regarded as broadly viable. This study contributes new knowledge on the broader environment of Swedish film, including its use by industry, its role in early public service television, and the conditions for existence of short film production in relation to subsidy policies.In its methodological approach, this study is in conversation with the field of useful cinema studies and seeks to expand its focus on film as part of broader organizational behaviour outside of direct company reach. Through four case studies that mix archival research with textual analysis, selected film examples are examined in how they interplayed with institutional conceptualizations of advertising, management, public service, and film as an art form. Chapter 1 contextualizes communication challenges in a nonpartisan postwar climate from the perspective of industry companies as film commissioners. Here, artistic experimentation and advertising approaches were considered unfavourable compared to a more traditional and factual approach, which was then believed to be more versatile. Chapter 2 analyses how the managerial approaches of the mining industry were revitalised, through the Swedish Council for Personnel Administration working as a film consultancy that established films about industry as an aid towards increased productivity. Through analysis of their entanglements with two films commissioned by mining companies, it is argued that the autonomy of the manager is protected, while the miner’s work is promoted as optimisable through close monitoring by management. Chapter 3 contextualises the use of industry-commissioned films on early public service television. It argues that ambiguous conceptions of public service within programming on industry presented commission films with broadcast opportunities, effectively circumventing advertising prohibitions. Analysis of two films on the mining industry broadcast in 1957 and 1960 respectively argues that television was used to impose invisibility on the existence of the industrial exploitation of Sápmi. Chapter 4 explores the relations between film policy and the dominance of commissioned films over independent short film production in postwar Sweden. Criticisms of commissioned films as boring in their adherence to traditions in filmmaking are connected to an ambition for them to become spaces for experimentation. This intention was in part driven by the lack of special subsidies for independent short film production. While some experimentation occurred in industry-commissioned films, it was sporadic in part due to commissioners not seeing themselves as patrons for the film arts.
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GEECT Special Issue: Mapping Artistic Research in Film
- 2020
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Ingår i: International Journal of Film and Media Arts. - 2183-9271. ; 5:2
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The idea for this special issue came out of the recognition that an association such as GEECT must react to this state of affairs and should contribute to its member schools’ ability to offer learning and teaching programmes that are built on state-of-the-art knowledge in the field. We envision this special issue as a show case of the research being conducted in different schools and also as a statement in favour of the relevance of artistic practice based research. The articles here included are all examples of how artistic research is undertaken in film and media arts, and achieves its results both within those disciplines, as well as often in a transdisciplinary setting, combining artistic methods with methods from other research traditions. In a context where film schools have been increasingly driven to conduct artistic research, we believe the development of the research environment is essential. This objective is just as important as the research outputs and their impact, and this has become a high strategic priority for GEECT that we also try to materialize via this special issue.
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- Gustafsson, Tommy, 1969-
(författare)
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En fiende till civilisationen : manlighet, genusrelationer, sexualitet och rasstereotyper i svensk filmkultur under 1920-talet
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The setting for this study is Swedish film culture of the 1920s, which has been studied with a focus on representations of masculinity and gender relations according to four themes: 1) children and youth 2) fatherhood and love 3) sexuality and popularity 4) ethnicity and racial stereotyping. The rise of new consumer culture in the first decades of the 20th century created turmoil between traditional and modern values, not least when it came to conceptions of gender. Studies on masculinity have often directed its efforts towards writing a history of ideals, bound by the concept of hegemonic masculinity; a concept that exclude women as insignificant for the social construction of masculinity. One ambition with this thesis has been to counter the long-lasting concept of hegemonic masculinity, and in the process, try to build a bridge between men and women studies. One other ambition has been question the canonisation of the “Golden Age” of Swedish silent filmmaking by introducing the concept of “the pluralism of film”, and by using a vast material including: Swedish feature films, reviews, articles from fan magazines and trade paper, screen plays, censorship cards, official reports, etc; thereby circumventing the concept of film as “art” in order to focus on film as representation in a more reliably way. One conclusion is the revelation of the diversity that surrounds social constructions of masculinity and gender relations in both film culture and society. In addition, Swedish film of the 20s hardly contained any male characters that upheld the hegemonic ideal, giving way to a more prominent presence of strong female characters, often in the shape of the New Woman. Women did as well have a great influence on the formation of masculinity. However, a notion of a Swedish normative masculinity became visible when contrasted with numerous racial stereotypes, such as malicious representations of Black people and Travellers. The emphasis on gender relations, rather than on ideals, has also contributed to a wider understanding of gender, where criteria such as generation, class, ethnicity and sexuality ought to be included. When it comes to the canonisation of the “Golden Age”, a strong notion exists about the integrated use of nature in film narratives as being a Swedish national trait, when in fact this could be linked only to a few films. If one would point out a trait that permeates Swedish film of the 1920s, it would not be the use of nature, but instead the flagrant racism and xenophobia.
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Intersections PARSE JOURNAL
- 2020
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Ingår i: PARSE JOURNAL. ; Summer:11
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This issue of PARSE journal concludes the theme of “Intersectional Engagements in Politics and Art”, first initiated as a research arc within PARSE in 2018. Under this theme, artists, scholars and students, as well as a wider public have gathered to share a critical exploration of the nexus of race, coloniality, gender and sexuality in contemporary art-making, scholarship and artistic research. Focusing on socially engaged practices related to memory, history, embodiment and alterity, the journal issue offers yet another set of considerations that brings together research by practitioners and scholars from a wide range of fields, disciplines and contexts. The theme began as a way to address and explore interest within arts research about the notion of intersectionality as a mode of creative practice, as well as a form of critical analysis. This interest, arguably following a turn towards the intersectional in feminist artistic practice and pedagogy, came as scholars in the humanities and social sciences were already debating the various appropriations and reifications that had seemingly made intersectionality into “a grand theory of everything”, to use Kimberlé Crenshaw’s words, with the effect of positioning intersectionality as a deeply contested, seemingly overdetermined concept.
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- Bowman, Jason E., 1967
(författare)
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Speaking Mandy
- 2014
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Ingår i: European Artistic Research Network Conference: Thinking on Stage, May 2 2014, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, EIRE.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I will present at the very beginning of a research process, towards the making of a new art work through which I aim to interrogate the heritage of the phonocentric Oralist tradition in the education of Deaf people. I seek to ‘read’ and deconstruct Alexander McKendrick’s film, Mandy (1952) through a co-participatory process - with Deaf people educated through Oralism and of the same generation as the child protagonist in the film - to question the advocacy of entry into the symbolic via the ‘spoken’ and ‘speech-identification’ and its relations to psychoanalytic and inter-subjective, spectator-focused film theory. Through mimetic and performative processes inherent to Oralism (such as speech-reading, lip-reading, ventriloquism, echo-practice, dubbing and lip-synchronisation) I aim to adapt Mandy - itself an adaptation of Hilda Lewis’ novel, 'The Day is Ours' (1947) – in ways that reveal the psychoanalytic dynamics of shame at play in Oralism’s delineation of Deafness as a culture and its adherence to Deafness as a disability.
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