A golden age lost? : Availability of early Swedish films for a broader audience

Early Swedish films from the 1910’s and 1920’s are not only an important part of Sweden’s cultural heritage, but also an important part of the international film heritage. This period is often refereed to as the golden age of Swedish film history. Despite this fact, the possibility to watch Swedish films from this period is very small and the main purpose of this thesis is to examine why the availability of these films has such low priority in the Swedish film policy and at the Swedish Film Institute. With the use of policy analysis, I study governmental policies and policies from the Swedish Film Institute for early Swedish films and seek to identify the policy problem and its different parts. The conclusion of the study is that there is a lack of clarified policies and financial resources concerning early Swedish films. One of the major parts of the policy problem is that more power is used to preserve rather than make the films available for a broader audience and that digitalization of these films has a low priority. The definition of the audience and for whom the films has to be made available is also deficient in the policies.Uppsatsnivå: