This study provides a meticulous account of the conditions for women filmmakers in relation to cultural movements, politics, and policy during the long 1970s. The time frame for this volume is from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Written in close dialog with archival methodologies, the book foregrounds women’s intersectional agency as facilitators of film cultures, as filmmakers but also in terms of their films to present new images of society. The authors identify new avenues for understanding how women’s creative practice emerged, which intersects with areas of influence beyond humanistic scholarship, including public policy, education, data and archival management, and political studies. By moving beyond “identity politics” or “embodied experiences” which, for good reason, have been the focus of much of feminist film studies, the contributors’ to this volume foregrounds the rich artistic and socio-political contexts, examining not only the works made, but also the networks of production, distribution, and dissemination that developed during the period. Women Filmmakers and the Welfare State: Transnational Film Cultures during the Long 1970s in Canada, Sweden, and Beyond delivers more than expected. It has been some time since the field has seen a book on women filmmakers with so much original archival material, and no other book has given us the comparative perspective we find here.Christoper Natzén, PhD. Research Officer, National Library of SwedenWomen Filmmakers and the Welfare State: Transnational Film Cultures in the Long 1970s in Canada, Sweden and Beyond provides you with a rich and diverse look into women’s film practice beyond the usual optics. By addressing the transnational connections between Canada and Sweden and film practices embedded in the various facets of the welfare state the collection of articles reveals both an intriguing film cultural undergrowth and opens up new perspectives and methods for further research.John Sundholm, Professor, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden.A remarkable achievement in scholarly collaboration and critical insight, Women Filmmakers and the Welfare State: Transnational Film Cultures in the Long 1970s in Canada, Sweden and Beyond sheds new light on the complex intersections of film production, negotiated cultural support, and professional networks during the heyday of welfare state reforms in Canada and Sweden. The volume traces a comparative and multifaceted approach to woman film history, highlighting overlooked spheres of action and agency in the long 1970s, while also raising urgent concerns about the threats to archival collections and cultural life today.Malin Wahlberg, Professor, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden. In times when public funding support to the arts are under attack, as a result of the welfare state being dismantled, this collection on women’s filmmaking and movements in Canada and Sweden during so-called long 1970s offers a much-needed reminder and urging. The many insightful essays – grasping both national and cross-national, organizational and individual examples – examine, compare, and explain the different, yet connected, state efforts that were made to support women’s film making, in the broadest sense, proving how such support led not only to the emergence of a number of prominent filmmakers, but also, to a widened, collaborative and inclusive film culture driven by women. In discussing the nationally specific as well as transnational mobility between the two countries, the essays help highlight the importance of the internationalist movement of 1970s feminist, queer, Indigenous, and post-colonial mobilizations, all while stressing how women’s film work has left few traces in physical and digital archives and in research – and how it is absolutely crucial to preserve their work and to write their histories.Louise Wallenberg, Professor, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden.This important book interweaves 1970s feminist movements, government policies, and transnational women’s filmmaking practices while decentering the United States. It reveals the unique contributions of Canada and Sweden to feminist filmmaking, as well as the continuities, discontinuities, and surprising connections between the two welfare-state nations. The volume expands beyond production to questions of distribution, reception, and archival afterlives. Scholars of feminist film history, transnational feminism, and historians of the welfare state will find it a valuable resource.Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies, Carleton University, Canada. Author of Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds (2026)Women Filmmakers and the Welfare State sets out clearly the cultural movements, politics and policy frameworks that shaped conditions for women filmmakers in Western Europe and North America during the 1970s. The comparative framework adopted sets out an exceptionally novel and generative way of thinking about how women in Canada and Sweden experienced public support for their heterogenous filmmaking and the affordances created by that support. This book offers an admirably broad range of practices and contexts through which to understand the exchanges and entanglements of filmmaking in places and periods that shaped international practice. Women Filmmakers and the Welfare State is an invaluable text for anyone working in the fields of cultural and gender politics, archival practices, comparative studies, access and women’s film history.Anne O’Brien, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Maynooth University, Ireland. Author of Women, Inequality and Media Work (2019)
