Racialization, or, how we make sense of, define, and produce human difference through logics founded in the social construction of ‘race’, continually shapes social interactions even decades after the theory of human ‘races’ has been disproven. This is particularly potent in the creative industries, and in particular the film-industry, both as a latent expression of shared meaning-making, and as a vehicle for (re)production of racial logics.

In this talk, Tess Skadegård Thorsen, PhD, explores the diversity initiatives initiated by the Danish Film Institute (DFI), examining how they maintain asymmetric racialized dynamics and uphold the marginalization of minoritized film professionals in Denmark. The talk presents an analytical framework for understanding representation which divides Politics of Representation, Acts of Representation and (Arti)Facts of Representation. This framework allows for an analytical shift from product to process, by emphasizing representation simultaneously as something that is and something one does. Racialization, then, is understood as a process actively maintained and reproduced throughout the various representational politics, acts, and artifacts of film.