Hugo Ljungbäck: Behind Closed Doors

Hugo Ljungbäck is a Swedish filmmaker, archivist, curator, and media scholar. His videos explore queer history, identity, representation, and sexuality through an autobiographical lens, emphasizing the possibilities afforded by found footage filmmaking in response to the ephemerality of queer history. By using appropriated text, photos, sound, and video to make visible the hidden, sometimes unflattering, and often unarchivable traces of queer experience, his work builds a makeshift archive of love letters, home movies, YouTube videos, sex tapes, spam emails, physique magazines, propaganda films, and selfies. This hour-long program presents the first survey of his work spanning the past eight years. Please note that some of the videos feature sexually explicit materials.

Hugo holds a BFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently a PhD Student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. His videos have screened at film festivals, art galleries, and museums internationally and are distributed worldwide by Vtape and Light Cone.