Swedish Film and Television Culture (15 credits / 15 ECTS credits)
Coordinator Joel Frykholm Office phone 08 / 674 76 12 E-mail joel.frykholm@mail.film.su.se Office hours By appointment
Course Description
The course provides an overview of the role of the moving image in Swedish culture and society during the last one hundred years, a period when moving image culture became increasingly more important. Swedish film and television culture is presented in relation to international trends and developments. Various approaches are considered, including the analysis of formal concerns combined with different socio-cultural perspectives as well as entertainment genres and avant-garde experiment. Industrial practice and film analysis are discussed with a focus on individual artists. Attention is also paid to case studies dealing with questions of criticism and reception.
Course objectives
After passing the course the student will have acquired:
· knowledge of the different media involved in moving image culture in the Swedish context.
· familiarity with the main methods of critically analysing film and TV output.
· familiarity with the main trends in Swedish film and television studies.
Course Requirements
Film, television, and other media material that are screened within the course framework are considered mandatory, and thereby equated with the reading material. Written assignments must be presented in electronic form. Delivered texts might be run through the software Genuine Text. Suspected cheating, such as plagiarism, will be dealt with by the University’s Disciplinary Board, after announcement from the Department Chair/Director of Studies.
Assessment and Grading
The course is assessed through one final exam at the conclusion of the course. You may choose to write in English or in Swedish. The grading follows a seven-grade scale: A (excellent), B (very good), C (good), D (satisfactory),E (sufficient), Fx (insufficient), F (entirely insufficient).
Course literature
Course book:
Soila, Tytti; Iversen, Gunnar and Söderbergh Widding, Astrid (1998) Nordic National Cinemas London: Routledge.
Course compendium:
Arrhenius, Sara. ”On Visibility and Spatiality in the Art of Ann-Sofi Sidén and Magnus Wallin”. In: Black Box Illuminated, edited by Sara Arrhenius, Magdalena Malm and Cristina Ricupero, 25-37. Stockholm: IASPIS, Nifca, Propexus, 2003.
Bazalgette, Cary and Staples, Terry. "Unshrinking the Kids: Children's Cinema and the Family Film". In: In fornt of the Children. Screen Entertainment and Young Audiences, edited by Cary Bazalgette and David Buckingham, 92-108. London: British Film Institute, 1995.
Brown, Wendy. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, 1-19. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Clüver, Claus. ”Intermediality and Interart Studies”. In: Changing Borders. Contemporary Positions in Intermediality, edited by Jens Arvidson, Mikael Askander, Jörgen Bruhn, and Heidrun Führer, 19-34. Lund: Intermedia Studies Press, 2007.
Elsaesser, Thomas. "ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries". In: European Cinema. Face to face with Hollywood, 57-81. Amsterdam: Amsterdam: UP, 2005.
Florin, Bo. ”The Early Films: Censors and Glimpses of the Classics”. In: Regi: Victor Sjöström / Directed by Victor Seastrom, 59-91. Stockholm: Cinemateket Svenska Filminstitutet, 2003.
Gorbman, Claudia. "Why Music? From Silents to Sound". In: Unheard Melodies. Narrative Film Music, 31-49. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Gunning, Tom. ”’A Dangerous Pledge’: Victor Sjöström’s Masterpiece, Mästerman”. In:
Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930, edited by John Fullerton and Jan Olsson, 204-231. London: John Libbey, 1999.
Habel, Ylva. Chapter 2 from Modern Media, Modern Audiences. Mass Media and Social Engineering in the 1930s Swedish Welfare State, 59-89. Stockholm: Aura, 2002.
Hansen, Miriam. “Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism”. Film Quarterly 54, nr. 1 (2000) http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1213797.pdf
Higson, Andrew. ”The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”, in Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie, 63-74. London and New York: Routledge 2000
Hutcheon, Linda. ”What” (Chapter 2). A Theory of Adaptation. New York and London: Routledge, 2006, 52-77.
Nash, Mark. ”Art and Cinema: Some Critical Reflections”. In: Art and the Moving Image: A Critical Reader, edited by Tanya Leighton, 444-459. London: Tate, 2008 [2002].
Olsson, Jan. ”One Commercial Week: Television in Sweden Prior to Public Service”, in Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, edited by Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson, 249-269. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.
Soila, Tytti, “En kvinnas ansikte/A Woman’s face”. In: The Cinema of Scandinavia, edited by Tytti Soila, 69-77. London: Wallflower Press 2004.
Thompson, Kristin. ”The International Exploration of Cinematic Expressivity”. In: Film and the First World War, edited by Karel Dibbets and Bert Hogenkamp, 65-85. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995.
Wallenberg, Louise. "Straight Heroes with Queer Inclinations: Male Film Stars in the Swedish 1930s". In: Queering Representations of Straightness, edited by Sean Griffiths, PAGES TBA. New York: SUNY Press, 2009.
Wright, Rochelle, “‘Immigrant Film’ in Sweden at the Millennium”. In: Transnational Cinema in a Global North. Nordic Cinema in Transition, edited by Andrew Nestingen and Trevor G. Elkington, 55-72. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.
Course schedule:
Sep 1
14-17 in F-salen
Sep 3
13.30 - 15 in F-salen
15-17 screening
8/9 Prof. Jan Olsson
13-15 (Bio Victor)
15-17
10/9 Christopher Natzén
13-15 (F-sal) Screening:
15-17 Swedish Film Music
15/9 Prof. Tytti Soila
13-15 (F-sal)
15-17 The myth of Medusa and the pre-WWII preparedness
17/9 Dr. Louise Wallenberg
13-15 (F-sal)
15-17 Paradoxical Males: Constructions of Masculinity in the 1930s
22/9 Prof. Maaret Koskinen
13-15 (F-sal)
15-17 Authors, Auteurs, and Adaptations
24/9 Prof. Maaret Koskinen
13-15 (F-sal)
15-17 Pictures in the Typewriter, Writings on the Screen: Film and
Intermediality
6/10 Dr. Malena Janson
13-15 (F-sal)
15-17 Swedish Cinema for and about Children
8/10 Dr. Annika Wik
13-17 (F-sal) Swedish Video Art
OBS! Tuesday Wednesday October 13-14 2009
10-12.30; 14-16
Rethinking American Studies: The Gangster Version
Auditorium (Hörsalen), The National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket)
Obligatory: Wednesday afternoon session 14->
20/10 Dr. Ylva Habel
13-17 (F-sal)
15-17 Images of a Raceless Nation? Cinema,
22/10 Prof. Jan Olsson
13-17 (F-sal)
Swedish Television: Production Structures, Programming, and
Public Service
27/10 Prof. Tytti Soila
13-15 (F-sal)
15-17 Swedish popular cinema and vernacular masculinity
Editor: Henrik Schröder
Source: Department of Cinema Studies
Updated: 09/01/09