Extracting versatility : Films commissioned by the mining industry in postwar Sweden

Sammanfattning: This study investigates how films commissioned by Swedish mining companies were employed for institutional use between 1945 and 1965. A central aspect of what gave these films their versatility stems from circumstances that allowed commissioned texts to pass as non-partisan audiovisual aids, as educational and informative instruments and as occasional examples of film art through intermediaries. In detaching texts from the biases of commissioning bodies, these films were treated as instrumental – and occasionally artistically valuable – texts on mining, in relation to work management and Sápmi contexts. Because these commissioned films blended in with established institutions, rather than offering a radical voice in society, they became sources for knowledge about how and which forms of audiovisual communication on industry were regarded as broadly viable. This study contributes new knowledge on the broader environment of Swedish film, including its use by industry, its role in early public service television, and the conditions for existence of short film production in relation to subsidy policies.In its methodological approach, this study is in conversation with the field of useful cinema studies and seeks to expand its focus on film as part of broader organizational behaviour outside of direct company reach. Through four case studies that mix archival research with textual analysis, selected film examples are examined in how they interplayed with institutional conceptualizations of advertising, management, public service, and film as an art form. Chapter 1 contextualizes communication challenges in a nonpartisan postwar climate from the perspective of industry companies as film commissioners. Here, artistic experimentation and advertising approaches were considered unfavourable compared to a more traditional and factual approach, which was then believed to be more versatile. Chapter 2 analyses how the managerial approaches of the mining industry were revitalised, through the Swedish Council for Personnel Administration working as a film consultancy that established films about industry as an aid towards increased productivity. Through analysis of their entanglements with two films commissioned by mining companies, it is argued that the autonomy of the manager is protected, while the miner’s work is promoted as optimisable through close monitoring by management. Chapter 3 contextualises the use of industry-commissioned films on early public service television. It argues that ambiguous conceptions of public service within programming on industry presented commission films with broadcast opportunities, effectively circumventing advertising prohibitions. Analysis of two films on the mining industry broadcast in 1957 and 1960 respectively argues that television was used to impose invisibility on the existence of the industrial exploitation of Sápmi. Chapter 4 explores the relations between film policy and the dominance of commissioned films over independent short film production in postwar Sweden. Criticisms of commissioned films as boring in their adherence to traditions in filmmaking are connected to an ambition for them to become spaces for experimentation. This intention was in part driven by the lack of special subsidies for independent short film production. While some experimentation occurred in industry-commissioned films, it was sporadic in part due to commissioners not seeing themselves as patrons for the film arts.