John Sundholm

This book will be released as Open Access. Based on a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, this book examines 40 years of post-war independent immigrant filmmaking in Sweden. John Sundholm and Lars Gustaf Andersson consider the creativity that lies in the state of exile, offering analyses of over 50 rarely seen immigrant films that would otherwise remain invisible and unarchived. They shed light on the complex web of personal, economic, and cultural circumstances that surround migrant filmmaking, discuss associations that became important sites of self-organization for exiled filmmakers, and explore the cultural practice of minor immigrant cinema archiving. The Cultural Practice of Immigrant Filmmaking applies film theory to immigrant filmmaking in a transnational context, exploring how immigrant filmmakers use film to find a place in a new cultural situation.

Vintern 1973 kunde man i Aftonbladet läsa: Vill du lära dig filma av mästerregissören Kjell Grede? Han ställer upp gratis. Så bjöd den nystartade Filmverkstan i Stockholm in intresserade amatörer och halvprofessionella filmare att göra kortfilm. Initiativet var tänkt att demokratisera en del av svensk filmproduktion och Filmverkstan kom att bli ett vattenhål också för andra oberoende filmare, många av dem immigrantfilmare. I Hellre fri än filmare studerar filmvetarna Lars Gustaf Andersson och John Sundholm Filmverkstans funktioner. De beskriver arbetssätten och engagemanget bland de involverade och ger en bild av de genrer och stilar som odlades: dokumentärer, animationer och olika blandformer som kunde finna nya vägar till publiken. Över 400 filmer gjordes över tre decennier i varierande genrer och format. Författarna sätter in verksamheten i ett historiskt sammanhang och diskuterar de kulturpolitiska aspekterna kring den. Filmverkstan utgjorde ett experiment i kulturell demokrati där marginaliserade grupper kunde komma till tals. Resultatet blev en laborativ offentlighet långt innan begrepp som Do-It-Yourself och mediekonvergens blivit kända. Boken utgör värdefull läsning för alla kultur- och filmintresserade

Although relatively small, the northern countries of Scandinavia have made a disproportionately large contribution to world cinema. Indeed, some of their films are among the best known of all times, including The Seventh Seal, Dancer in the Dark, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And Scandinavian directors are also among the best known, just to mention Ingmar Bergman and Lars von Trier. But there is much more to the cinema of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland than that, and this book shows us what they have been accomplishing over more than a century from the beginnings of cinema until the present. The Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Cinema shows just how long and busy this history has been in the chronology, starting in 1896. The introduction then describes the situation in each one of the component countries, all of which approached and developed the field in a similar but also slightly different manner. The dictionary section, with over 400 substantial entries, looks at the situation in greater detail, with over 400 substantial entries on major actors, directors and others, significant films, various genres and themes, and subjects such as animation, ethnicity, migration and censorship. Given its contribution to world cinema it is good to finally have an encyclopedia like this which can meet the interests of the scholar and researcher but also the movie fan.

This first-ever study of Swedish experimental film represents the results of a Swedish Research Council initiative in 2006–2008. The essays address the institutions, filmmakers, and films important to the history of experimental film in Sweden, and place this history in larger artistic and socio-cultural contexts. The authors look at the work of the Independent Film Group, regional Fluxus groups, E. A. T., and figures such as Viking Eggeling, Rune Hagberg, Pontus Hultén, Öyvind Fahlström, Leo Reis, Bo Jonsson, and Åke Karlung.