Journal of Scandinavian Cinema - Volume 15, Issue 1, 2025

This article investigates representations of media in the Danish slasher films Sidste time (Final Hour) (Schmidt 1995) and Mørkeleg (Backstabbed) (Schmidt 1996), arguing that such representations function as focal points of a self-reflexive exploration of slasher cinema and its potential cultural work. Utilizing two interrelated media historical contexts as interpretive frameworks, it first reads Final Hour as concerned with the commercialization of Danish film and television culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s, arguing that the film establishes television as a medial and ideological Other in order to explore its own relationship to the dominant system of capitalist commodification. It then reads Backstabbed as engaged with concurrent anxieties concerning filmic representations of violence, specifically the Scandinavian media panics revolving around home video technology. It concludes that Final Hour’s ideological ambivalence allows it to retain a degree of critical distance, while Backstabbed reinforces the cultural logic it ostensibly opposes.

This article discusses the dissemination strategy for Swedish films produced using photographic colour film systems released between 1946 and 1956. For these films, a recurring approach of the respective production and distribution companies was to employ the keyword ‘first’ for promotional purposes. Drawing on archival research at the Swedish Film Institute and the National Library of Sweden, the article examines publications such as cinema programmes, advertisements, press reviews and reports from various production phases published in periodicals. Through this discourse analysis, probable reasons behind the choice of specific colour film processes are hypothesized and placed in the broader context of cinema journalism and industrial practices in film promotion in Sweden during this period.

This article discusses the value of projection prints as primary sources. Preservation work at the National Library of Norway on two Norwegian educational films in home economics from the years 1944 and 1948 led to the discovery of variations between projection prints. The use of colour in some prints motivated preserving several versions of one of the films. The article argues that different versions should be made available in the web portal for accountable dissemination and examines important issues in preservation work in general.