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Cigarettes & alkohol: Public health films in mid-century Scandinavia
22 November 2023, 5:00 pm–8:00 pm
Assessing the imaginative strategies used by filmmakers to capture audiences, Professor Claire Thomson's inaugural lecture is free and open to all.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
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SELCS Department – UCL
Location
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Gustave Tuck LT, Main buildingGower StreetLondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
Film was an important tool for the architects of the Scandinavian welfare states that emerged after World War II. Innovations such as holiday and sick pay, housing policy and healthcare provision had to be explained to citizens.
Some films had the difficult task of persuading viewers to change their behaviour in the light of new data, especially in the realm of public health.
Focusing on campaigns against cigarettes and alcohol, this lecture examines the imaginative strategies used by filmmakers to shock, disgust, move and persuade audiences. These forgotten films, now surfacing as digitised fragments of national heritage, have much to tell us about the collective tensions, anxieties, values and pleasures of mid-century Scandinavian culture.
About the Speaker
Professor Claire Thomson
Director of the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at UCL
Professor Claire Thomson is the author of Short Films from a Small Nation: Danish informational Cinema 1935-1965 (2018) and Thomas Vinterberg’s FESTEN (2013), and co-editor of five volumes on Nordic film and literature, including A History of Danish Cinema (2021, with Isak Thorsen and Pei-Sze Chow), and Nordic Media Histories of Propaganda and Persuasion (2022, with Fredrik Norén and Emil Stjernholm). She is the Director of the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at UCL.
