Focusing on Sweden, this article departs from the proposition that film production and the film industry are governed by institutional arrangements that produce and reproduce gender and gender relations. The article is based on interviews with directors and producers and analyses how Swedish directors and producers describe their roles and relationship, relating this to how these roles are shaped by the law, film policy, and financial arrangements. The article argues that the Swedish film industry rests on a gendered division of labor, that the professions of director and producer are constructed in relation to masculinity, and that the gender equality measures undertaken are not sufficient to come to grips with the gender inequalities in the industry.

As film stars, actresses have throughout film history contributed to the film industry’s glamorous surface, providing audiences with visual attraction and different representations of femininity. To talk about women in film as “invisible” may thus seem odd or even wrong. This book, however, is concerned with the paradox that on the other side of the camera, women are clearly underrepresented. This is true of contemporary film culture, and has been true historically, despite significant variations between countries/geographical areas, historical time periods and different roles/professions in film production, distribution and exhibition. This anthology recovers forgotten aspects of women’s work and memory, tracing women’s film work through the lens of Swedish film history, with a few forays into international film ventures. Using a variety of methods and approaches, including careful study of previously neglected archival material, lived experiences, interviews, and theoretical reflections on feminist historiography, the book explores themes of women’s agency and (lack of) visibility in a cultural context very different to Hollywood, thus providing readers with a healthy counterweight to the dominance of Anglo-American material in film scholarship published in English. The articles deal with women’s agency in a wide range of roles, in film production, exhibition and criticism, but also with new perspectives on stars/actresses and their agency, and including LGBT and queer identities.

The research presents material evidence of women’s involvement in film culture being obscured and ignored because of its status as “women’s work”, and/or of marginal rather than mainstream interest. The book is divided into two parts, where the first part collects chapters that cover neglected dimensions of silent film culture and the use of archival film as cultural memory in documentary work from various time periods, whereas the second part of the book is focussed mainly on films and filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s.

Att beskriva kvinnors roll i filmhistorien som ”osynliga” kan tyckas underligt. Skådespelerskorna har ju genom filmens historia försett publiken med tolkningar av det feminina, och som filmstjärnor har de genomgående förknippats med filmindustrins glamorösa yta och gett karaktär åt kvinnlig lockelse och njutning.

I den engelskspråkiga antologin Making the invisible visible ägnar sig dock en grupp forskare åt att undersöka den underrepresentation av kvinnor som varit latent på andra arenor av filmkulturen. Även om det finns betydande skillnader – mellan länder och geografiska områden, mellan olika tidsepoker och mellan olika yrkesroller – så har filmhistoriens produktionsbås och maskinrum generellt ockuperats och besatts av män. Och fortfarande i dagens filmkultur domineras en mängd yrken av män.

Skribenterna utforskar kvinnors ”aktionsradie” i en rad yrkesroller, utifrån bland annat diskussioner om HBTQ och queeridentitet i filmbranschen. I ett par texter framkommer också nya perspektiv på kvinnliga skådespelare.

This anthology recovers forgotten aspects of women’s work and memory, tracing women’s film work through the lens of Swedish film history, with a few forays into international film ventures. Using a variety of methods and approaches, including careful study of previously neglected archival material, lived experiences, interviews, and theoretical reflections on feminist historiography, the book explores themes of women’s agency and (lack of) visibility in a cultural context very different to Hollywood, thus providing readers with a healthy counterweight to the dominance of Anglo-American material in film scholarship published in English.

In my ongoing research on women’s historical contribution to Swedish film culture, an important discovery regarding women’s agency has been the number of women who were active in cinema management early on in the twentieth century. Many of these women owned or managed one or several cinemas during a short period of time in the 1910s or 1920s, and then moved on to another business, or left the workforce due to changed circumstances (such as marriage or retirement), but some of them maintained a long career in film exhibition, lasting well into the sound era. Since the formation of a Swedish cinema culture coincided with the campaigns for women’s suffrage and women taking up an increasingly large share of the waged workforce, the women who made their way into cinema exhibition in the first decades of the century should be understood within the context of first wave feminism, the women’s movement of the nineteenth century which reacted against women’s exclusion from or marginalization in politics, economy, and society.1 This essay builds on previous findings regarding women cinema owners and managers in the silent era, in order to discuss the methodological issues involved in researching these (largely) unknown women and why an investigation of their agency is important, despite the scarcity of available documentation.

This article explores the representation of Stockholm on film, using as empirical material films from the interdisciplinary research project I-Media-Cities. More specifically, the authors discuss archival films from the silent era featuring the Swedish capital, most of which belong within the broad category of non-fiction. Within the specific conditions of this project, how may archival film be of use to researchers performing a critical excavation of urban space?

This essay investigates the role of women in Swedish film exhibition from the early days of ambulating film exhibitors, through the formation of a cinema culture with permanent venues, and all the way up to the coming of sound. Although membership and leadership of professional organizations, such as Sveriges Biografägareförbund/Sweden’s National Association of Cinema Owners (founded in 1915) or Svenska Film-och biografmannasällskapet/The Swedish Film and Cinema Society (founded in 1917), as well as contemporary articles in the trade press, reveal that cinema-owners and film exhibitors were male-dominated professions, a large number of women were nevertheless involved in running Swedish cinemas in the silent era. The title of the essay refers to the ways in which–as we shall see–women cinema managers have been described as respectable hostesses, turning their cinemas into tasteful, comfortable venues. However, “discrimination” can also refer to practices of unfair treatment, which have circumscribed women’s agency in different circumstances, and limited their presence in film history textbooks.