Scandinavian Shadow Cinemas - Symposium

EVENT

Start date: Friday 20 November 2026

Time: 09:00

End date: Saturday 21 November 2026

Time: 13:00

Location: F-salen, Filmhuset

Foto: Henrik Schröder

A two day symposium / workshop with focus on the films that weren't. This symposium brings attention to unmade, discarded, forgotten, and failed films—a dimension of film culture and industry that we refer to as “shadow cinemas.” A full day of presentations by film and media scholars from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany and the UK will feature historical case studies as well as discussions of contemporary cultures of production. In this way, the symposium aims to reframe Scandinavian cinema: botched projects, wasted opportunities, and films that misfire account for most of the activity in the film sector, but have been largely neglected in film scholarship, especially in a Nordic context.

Scandinavian Shadow Cinemas: Unmade, Unseen, Discarded and Forgotten

Hosted by the Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University

Organizers: Joel Frykholm, Anna Sofia Rossholm och Eirik Frisvold Hanssen

Program

Friday 20

Friday Nov 20 (Friday program is open for public to attend)

9–9:30 Meetup and coffee outside of F-salen (Filmhuset, 5th floor)

9:30–9:45 Welcome and a brief introduction (F-salen)
Anna Sofia Rossholm (Stockholm University), Joel Frykholm (Stockholm University) and Eirik Frisvold Hanssen (National Library of Norway, Oslo)

9:45–11:00 Panel 1 (Chair: Eirik Frisvold Hanssen)
- Eva Novrup Redvall (University of Copenhagen): Untold Film Stories: Researching Unproduced Film Scripts
- Joel Frykholm (Stockholm University): Film Ideas, Public Subsidies and the Politics of Failure: Digging Through the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s Wastebasket
- Patrick Vonderau (University of Halle-Wittenberg): Obsolete Media Spaces: Notes on the History of the Video Game Arcade

11:00–11:15 Break

11:15–12:55 Panel 2 (Chair: Anna Sofia Rossholm)
- Kimmo Laine (University of Turku): The Never-Ending Story of the General Mannerheim Biopic
- Eirik Frisvold Hanssen (National Library of Norway, Oslo): Potential and Absence: The Intermedial Afterlives of Unrealized Films
- Bo Florin (Stockholm University), Henning Lindahl (Stockholm University of the Arts) och Matti Bye (musician and composer and honorary doctor at Stockholm University): Constantinople Continued: Reimagining a Film That Never Was
- Christian Rossipal (Stockholm University): Title TBA

13:00–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:40 Panel 3 (Chair: Joel Frykholm)
- Audun Engelstad (University of Inland Norway): When Selznick Claimed Bergman Was an Amateur
- Casper Tybjerg (University of Copenhagen): Trial Balloons and Dark Hatreds: Dreyer’s Shadow Cinema
- Thor Holt (University of Oslo): The Genesis and Afterlife of Dreyer’s Unmade Brand
- Claire Thomson (University College London): Government Decommissions: Proposals, treatments and other archival fragments of the mid-20c Scandinavian bestillingsfilm/beställningsfilm

15:40–16:10 Coffee break

16:10–17:30 Panel 4 (Chair: Eirik Frisvold Hanssen)
- Anna Sofia Rossholm (Stockholm University): The Lost Dialogues of Women’s History: Ulla Isaksson’s Unmade Adaptations of Elin Wägner, Victoria Benedictsson and Selma Lagerlöf
- Ingrid Ryberg (University of Gothenburg): A Speculative History of Lasse Silvén’s Lost “Homophile” 1940s Films
- Saki Kobayashi (Stockholm University): Unfilmed Films, Authorship and Stardom: Unexpected Encounters between Viveca Lindfors, Carl Th. Dreyer and Rune Carlsten

17:30–18:00 Concluding discussion

Saturday 21

Saturday program is internal only and not open for public.

10–13 Network meeting
- Future network activities
- Funding opportunities
- Publication plans

Last updated: 2026-11-13

Source: Department of Media Studies