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MAI: FEMINISM & VISUAL CULTURE – Curating (queer) film archives and creating online communities in times of the pandemic: The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images

Endast på engelska

By Dagmar Brunow, October 5 – 2020

Anna Linder from SAQMI talks to Dagmar Brunow about the challenges of curating queer film and video art during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired new forms of virtual community engagement. However, when events move online how can screenings maintain a sense of community, which has been so important when showcasing LGBTQIA + archives in actual venues? A valuable best practice example comes with an online event COME TOGETHER, which was arranged by The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images (SAQMI) in April 2020. Initially planned as a local gathering, the event moved online in response to the COVID-19 crisis. So, in what way can it serve as a model for other queer archives events?

Dagmar Brunow, a film scholar at Linnaeus University in Sweden, and a member of the programming collective at the Hamburg International Queer Film Festival, speaks to Anna Linder (AL), the founder of SAQMI. The archive is the first to collect and curate queer moving images by filmmakers and video artists working in Sweden. SAQMI preserves their works and makes them accessible through curated film screenings, often in collaboration with festivals or cultural organisations from both Sweden and abroad.

Read the interview here

MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture
A non-hierarchial journal open to multivalent feminist expression, research & critique of visual culture.

We smash patriarchy.

MAI provides a free open-access publication forum for feminist scholars, writers, artists and activists who address visual culture at large. Our authors operate under the assumption that female experiences are never uniform. Just like in everyday life, in art and media multiple other markers of social difference always influence expressions of female, agency, perspective and identity.

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Screenshot by Del LaGrace Volcano during Come Together, April 2020