Curating Precarity : Swedish Queer Film Festivals as Micro-Activism

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.