Folkets Bio och Kvalitetsfilmen : Kvalitetsbegreppet i den svenska filmbranschen

Sammanfattning: This bachelor thesis takes the quality term about film from the Swedish Film institute’s founder, Harry Schein and puts it in a historical and present context. Quality films as Schein puts it will be analysed in relation to SFI and Folkets Bio’s national and local association, and through this the relationship between SFI and Folkets Bio will indirectly be analysed. To do this I had to put both SFI and Folkets Bio in a historical and present context where the quality term is in focus since the 1960s. The quality term is further explained with a couple of auteur theories by different film theorists because of the term’s close connection to one of Sweden’s or the world’s most recognizible auteurs, Ingmar Bergman. Because of Folkets Bio’s usage of the term in later years I found it to be a fleeting one that in the 1960s was not close to Folkets Bio, but has changed and is today a big talking point of the association. This allowed me to make a reception study based on reviews from film critics of different news outlets. Based on the insights of Janet Staiger’s reception theory on how film critics review art and avant-garde cinema, I picked three films that were distributed by Folkets Bio’s national association and screened at the local association of Växjö, Sweden. I also use interviews with two people working in the local association and the audience count for the three films that are analysed. My intention with this is to see how both the population and the local association of Växjö look at quality film. What I found was that the local association in Växjö did not want to market the films they are showing as quality film because of the term’s exclusion as something that is high cultured and not for the ”people” which Folkets Bio was meant for in their beginning in the 1970s.