«An Unintended Effect of the Introduction of the Public Support Systems» – Film policy, film support and the contemporary Scandinavian production landscape

This article is concerned with the conditions for contemporary European film production as exemplified by the particular example of Scandinavia and Sweden. The investigation is a comparative survey where particular statistics, on contemporary as well as historical audiovisual production, serves as a base for a compare and contrast study. More specifically, an attempt is made to assess and relate some of the existing conditions and structural alterations within the present environment to the introduction of film policy and film support in the 1960s. The abovementioned argument is contextualized in two ways. First, a historical perspective is introduced where the current situation is compared to an era during which vertically integrated companies existed in Scandinavia and many groups of film workers were under long-term contracts. Second, the introduction of public film support during the 1950s and 1960s in most parts of Europe is considered. This is done since the support seemed to have had the unintentional effect of facilitating the making of films without an «industrial backbone», as one observer has put it.