The Cultural Policy of Minor Cinemas: The Swedish Film Workshop 1973 - 2001

Project: Research

Project Details

Popular science description

During the years 1973–2001, the Swedish public service broadcaster SVT and the Swedish Film Institute cooperated on the ‘Film Workshop’, a venue for minor cinema. This research project aims to establish a directory of the films produced and to discuss the activity in terms of cultural policy, as well as within film history.

The Film Workshop was initiated in 1973 and closed down in 2001. Inspired by a growing number of film workshops in Europe, the Swedish workshop was established as an informal organisation, where anyone could apply for technical assistance or financial support in order to produce a film. The general public and the community of independent filmmakers showed great interest in the project. There are around 2 600 scripts and applications in the archive. Around 700 were encouraged in some way through the workshop, and around 400 films, mostly shorts, are registered as completed and distributed.

Among the films are animations, documentations of art projects, fiction films, as well as a lot of documentaries treating various social issues such as gender roles and immigration. The majority of the filmmakers are amateurs, but there are also professionals, e. g. political refugees from other countries.

It is important to research this institution, which gave room for several minor cinemas. These filmmakers wanted to be seen as ‘free’ filmmakers - what kind of freedom did they enjoy? The Film Workshop will also be researched as an experiment within film politics in relation to other media institutions. To the questions of cultural democracy are added research questions concerning aspects of film style and film history.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date2010/01/012012/12/31