Film exhibition was a regular and common feature in hundreds of multipurpose venues owned by local divisions of the temperance and labor movements in Sweden since the beginnings of film. I argue that the investment by civil society in film exhibition is important to understanding Swedish film history and culture at large. It provides an interesting case of blurred boundaries between the state, civil society and the commercial film industry. Film exhibition in the venues provided income for maintaining the venues per se, thus encouraging the continued existence of grassroots progressive activity also after the democratic breakthrough. At the same time, it offered an opportunity for its largely rural audience to participate in the national disciplinary project of gathering the people of the modern welfare state under the auspices of its own spaces.