Arkiv för ljud och bild - Visa filer

(woi). Till skillnad från på SFI behöver man på
SVT inte vara miljonär för att kunna bedriva filmforskning.
För de forskare som tidigare studerat
videokopior på Statens ljud och bildarkiv - exakt
historisk filmforskning kan faktiskt bara bedrivas
på I6 eller 35 Inilimeters filmmaterial-har detta
möjliggjort en ansenlig förbättring av forskningsvillkoren.
Tvivelsutan kommer det att gagna
kunskapsproduktionen kring rörliga bilder. Tevearkivet
fungerar just som ett bibliotek och i skrivande
stund håller ett flertal avhandlingar och
postdocprojekt att färdigställas med utgångspunkt i
Tevearkivets filmmateriaL
Filmarkiv fungerar i bästa fall som nationella
minnesbanker kring det förflutnas framträdelseformer.
Så är inte fallet med SFI, vars medarbetare
emellanåt förefaller arbeta i enlighet med en spinozisk
arkivpolicy där film bevaras sub specie aeternitatis
[under evighetens synvinkel] och inte för att
man skall använda och titta på filmmaterialet. Man
får hoppas att en eventuell förändring är i sikte,
även om arkivverksamheten, som pressmeddelandet
för filmvårdscentralen i Grängesberg antyder,
legitimeras med floskler om tillgänglighet för forskare
och intresserade. Om arkivtillgängligheten i
Grängesberg blir densamma som i Stockholm
finns det all anledning för forskare intresserade av
icke-fiktivt filmmaterial att se dystert på framtiden
och den nya filmvårdscentralen.
SUMMAR Y
The objective of the artide is to outline discussions,
ideas and concepts concerning visual media as a
historical source and the gradual establishment of
media archives during the late I 9th and early 20th
century. According to Alan Trachtenberg "historical
knowledge declares its true value by its photographability."
Moreover, media history does not
solely refer to the history of media, bu t also to how
different types of visual media came to document
the past. Swedish nonfiction film during the I9IOS
was, for example, in the trade press regarded as a
document providing historical and national information.
Thus, visual media do not only present
images of what something once looked like. Film
Pelle Snickars
and photographs also act as carriers of rnicro historical
evidence on everyday history, this in addition
to visually inforrning on aesthetic ideals and mediating
practices.
One of the discourses on photography during the
latter half of the I 9th century considered i t kind of
a scientific instrument for visual documentation. In
the I89os photography became a museological tool
in Sweden, for example in the visual preservation of
local national customs. Arthur Hazelius, the fonnder
of Skansen and the N or die Museum, already in
the I87os collected regional photographs. By I9oo
photography had not only become part of an official
museological discourse on preservation, hut also
notably a visual medium for presenting historical
spaces, as in Old Swedish Cities - a publication
explicitly based on the topographically indexical
and mnemonic qualities of the photographic image.
The initiative to make a photographical inventory
of old Swedish cities partly came from the Nordie
Museum. The publication of the first part of Old
Swedish Cities in I9o8, testifies that by I9IO a
commercial topographic discourse (including stereoscopic
photographs, slides, postcards and film)
was being transformed, or rather, was incorporated
in to a museological discourse. Naturally, visual media
continued to be commercially popular. What is
interesting, however, is how similar media products
made an impact in the national museum and
archive culture as visual documents.
During the I9IOS the Nordie Museum began
using cinema as a way of documenting national
ethnography. By the time various people, such as
Boleslas Matuszewski and Fredrik Hallgren, had
written about film as a historical source and argued
for the financinng of national film archives. During
the teens the Nordie museum established a film
archive and from I926 to I94o, produced hundreds
of nonfiction films on local Swedish ethnography.
Subjects ranged from dance films and local
weddings to church weekends in the north. In a text
en ticled "Cultural historical film. Document of the
first order", one of the amanuenses of the museum,
Torsten Lenk, compared film sequences depicting
Swedish ethnographical items to regular museo-
ARKIV, SAMHÄLLE OCH FORSirniNG 200 I: 2