NNAQH ▰ Webinar: Queering Nordic Film Heritage

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Dagmar Brunow, Professor in Film Studies, discussed several important questions regarding LGBTQI+ representation in Nordic film archives.

Professor Brunow examined how film and video archives in the Nordic countries address LGBTQI+ pasts in audiovisual heritage and the current challenges these archives face when preserving such material. Her presentation covered feature films, documentary footage, experimental works, and home movies, providing a comprehensive overview of the processes involved in collecting, cataloguing, and creating access to these films and videos.

Drawing on cases from both national film institutes and smaller archives, such as SAQMI – The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images, Professor Brunow argued for the importance of considering the vulnerability of LGBTQI+ individuals in the public sphere. She emphasized that archivists must carefully navigate the ambivalence of visibility when handling such sensitive materials.

Dagmar Brunow is professor of film studies at Linnaeus University. Her research centres on archives and audiovisual heritage, cultural memory, documentary filmmaking as well as feminist and queer experimental filmmaking and video practice. She is the author of Remediating Transcultural Memory: Documentary Filmmaking as Archival Intervention (2015), editor of Stuart Hall. Aktivismus, Pop & Politik (2015), co-editor of Queer Cinema (2018, with S. Dickel), and a special issue on archiving for Frauen & Film (2024, with K. Müller). Her research projects on audiovisual memories and digitisation “The Lost Heritage: Improving Collaborations between Digital Film Archives (2021-2024) and “The Cultural Heritage of Moving Images” (2016-2018) have been funded by the Swedish Research Council.  She collaborates with SAQMI (Gothenburg), filmform (Stockholm), and bildwechsel (Hamburg), and has been part of the programming committee for the Hamburg Queer Film Festival.