Heritage institutions are currently trying to diversify national historiography by including narratives of ethnic and social minorities. This practice coincides with the digital turn which allows museums and (film) archives to remediate parts of their collections onto digital platforms. The recognition of specific groups, however, is not an easy task. Having to deal with government directives, the somewhat problematic legacies of collection policies and cataloguing practices, the lack of metadata as well as legal and ethical issues are but some of the challenges film archives are currently facing. At the same time, practices of recognition and the resulting visibility are ambivalent (Schaffer, 2008; Thomas et al 2018). This approach positions the archive into an object of analysis, shifting the focus on the archive as a site of knowledge retrieval to a site of knowledge production (Foucault 1972, Stoler 2002). Instead of looking at ways of including LGBT+-lives as based on a priori identities, I suggest studying the processes of regulation according to which different lifestyles and experiences become ‘acknowledgeable’.

LGBT+ lives in the archive have been defined by neglect, amnesia, or misrepresentations due to criminalization or pathologization. This is why specialized LGBT+ archives are often conceptualized as ‘safe havens’ for the queer community. Archival practice in such grassroot and community archives is often considered to be a labor of love, a practice of caring, an act of solidarity. Digitisation, however, is currently changing archival practice by allowing archival content to circulate online. What happens if footage filmed in separatist spaces or nightclubs leave the safe spaces of the archive and can be accessed worldwide by anyone? My paper looks at the risks and possibilities of today’s archival challenges when curating LGBT+ memories. Drawing on some of the findings from my research project “The Cultural Heritage of the Moving Image” (Swedish Research Council), this paper will examine both the recognition of LGBT+ lives in the Swedish national film archive and in community archives, such as The Lesbian Home Movie Project (Maine) and bildwechsel (Hamburg).