Swedish Film Feminism: Between Grassroots Movements and Cultural Policies
By (Author) Dr Ingrid Ryberg
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
18th September 2025
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Film history, theory or criticism
Feminism and feminist theory
Hardback
240
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Drawing on rich archival materials, this open access book offers the first in-depth historical account of the feminist film movement in Sweden in the 1970s. Ingrid Ryberg makes an important contribution to feminist film studies by providing detailed case studies of crucial contexts of production, distribution and reception; key films and directors including Mai Zetterling's The Girls; and elaborate reassessments of central debates in feminist film theory. By unearthing this national film history, Swedish Film Feminism brings new insights into the politics and aesthetics of the feminist film movement as well as revealing how they were shaped by funding opportunities and interactions with state agencies. Rybergs central argument is that womens film culture in Sweden nurtured a state feminist image of accomplished gender equality, at the same time that opportunities for women filmmakers in practice remained scarce. She makes a topical and substantial contribution to contemporary widespread debates about womens filmmaking, the politics of representation, and feminist media histories both in and outside academia. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The University of Gothenburg.
Ingrid Ryberg is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Cultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and a filmmaker. She is a co-editor of The Power of Vulnerability: Mobilising Affect in Feminist, Queer and Anti-racist Media Cultures (2018). In addition, she is the director of the documentary En arm av lskande (An Army of Lovers, 2018), about queer filmmaking in Sweden in the 1970s.