[Filmfestivalresearch] New Doctoral Thesis - Curating Precarity: Swedish Queer Film Festivals as Micro-Activism

Eli Sh elmnazshahbali at gmail.com
Sun Apr 25 10:58:17 CEST 2021


Dear all,
I am in the third year of my Ph.D. in Germany, and my research is on
lesbian film in Queer Mainstream cinema. Due to different circumstances, I
have been completely isolated and haven't had access to individuals or
communities with who I can consult or share. Do you happen to know groups
or communities I can reach out for help and also for networking? Any
workshop, conferences that can take me outside of Germany where I can meet
new people with similar research interests? Thanks in advance!

Kind Regards,
Eli

On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 2:44 PM Siddharth <shrekzie at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear list members
>
> I am happy to announce the publication of my doctoral monograph *Curating
> Precarity: Swedish Queer Film Festivals as Micro-Activism *from Uppsala
> University.
>
> You can download the monograph here -
> http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-432531
>
> *Abstract *
>
> This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at Malmö Queer
> Film Festival and Cinema Queer Film Festival in Stockholm, between
> 2017-2019. It explores the relevance of queer film festivals in the lives
> of LGBTQIA+ persons living in Sweden, and reveals that these festivals are
> not simply cultural events where films about gender and sexuality are
> screened, but places through which the political lives of LGBTQIA+ persons
> become intelligible.
>
> The queer film festivals perform highly contextualized and diverse sets of
> practices to shape the LGBTQIA+ discourse in their particular settings.
> This thesis focuses on salient features of this engagement: how the queer
> film festivals define and articulate “queer”, their engagement with space
> to curate “queerness”, the role of failure and contingency in shaping the
> queer film festivals as sites of democratic contestations, the performance
> of inclusivity in the queer film festival organization, and the
> significance of these events in the lives of the people who work or
> volunteer at these festivals. The thesis combines an ethnographic approach
> with post-structuralist discourse theory and insights from other fields,
> including the growing academic discipline of film festival research, to
> de-construct the entrenched meanings, representations and ideologies that
> are embedded in signifying practices performed at the festival.
>
> A recurring theme of this research is the way LGBTQIA+ persons living in
> Sweden find themselves abandoned and vulnerable in contemporary Swedish
> society. The thesis proposes that the queer film festivals become relevant
> through re-constructing the precariousness of LGBTQIA+ lives in Sweden, by
> engaging in various forms of micro-activism. The research describes how
> participants engage in micro-activist practices, bringing together people
> who become collectively aware that things can change. It unpacks the
> internal tensions between the various identity groups present at the
> festival, shows how these festivals struggle to construct a LGBTQIA+
> community, and outlines the ways in which queer film festivals can be
> understood beyond the prism of identity politics. Through a detailed study
> of the two festivals, the thesis suggests a multi-faceted illustration of
> how micro-activism is performed in a post-rights society such as Sweden.
>
>
> Siddharth Chadha
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