BAMPFA is Lead US Venue for Worldwide Ingmar Bergman Centennial Retrospective
Yearlong Series of Films by Legendary Swedish Auteur is Distinguished by Special Guests and a Fourteen-Week Lecture-Screening Series
Series Opens with Special Guest Appearances by Liv Ullmann in Berkeley and San Rafael
(Berkeley, CA) January 16, 2018—In 2018, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) launches a centennial retrospective of films by Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish auteur widely considered to be one of the twentieth century’s greatest directors. Comprising more than seventy-five screenings, Bergman 100is the largest retrospective of Bergman’s work ever mounted in the San Francisco Bay Area. The series opens at BAMPFA with a guest appearance by Liv Ullmann, the iconic actress who appeared in eleven Bergman films.
Presented in partnership with The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, Svenska Institutet, and Janus Films, BAMPFA’s Bergman 100 is part of a worldwide program of screenings, exhibitions, symposia, and other events to commemorate the centenary of Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). Bergman 100 comprises five thematic installments across 2018, beginning on February 1 with a tribute to Liv Ullmann—who introduces the first two screenings in the program, Persona (February 1) and Shame (February 3). Ullmann’s visit to the Bay Area is presented in collaboration with the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, which hosts the actress in person on February 2 and 4.
BAMPFA’s Bergman 100 retrospective runs concurrently with a Bergman series at New York’s Film Forum (February 7 through March 15), and other North American cinematheques will present Bergman showcases throughout the centennial year. In Fall 2018, BAMPFA hosts a fourteen-week lecture-screening series on Bergman’s work, led by UC Berkeley professor of Scandinavian Linda H. Rugg.
“BAMPFA is very excited to have this rare opportunity to showcase the films of Ingmar Bergman, who holds a central place in the history of cinema and whose lengthy and influential career as a writer/director spans his work in theater, film, and television,” said Senior Film Curator Susan Oxtoby, who organized Bergman 100. “I am especially pleased that we will have the ability to present the retrospective across the entire year, allowing Bay Area audiences many chances to see the films, which will be scheduled thematically and will look forward and backward across Bergman’s work over the decades.”
The program for Bergman 100: A Tribute to Liv Ullmann follows below, along with a comprehensive list of films that screen in subsequent installments of the series. For the most current screening dates, film descriptions, and information about special guests, visit bampfa.org.
Part I: A Tribute to Liv Ullmann
Thursday, February 1 at 7:30 PM (85 mins)
Persona(1966)
In Person: Liv Ullmann
An actress named Elizabeth (Liv Ullmann) elects to become silent and is put into the care of Alma (Bibi Andersson), a nurse companion. The actress’s act has two aspects: it is a wish for ethical purity, but it is also a species of sadism, a virtually impregnable position of strength from which to manipulate her nurse, who is charged with the burden of talking. By the end of the film, the two characters are engaged in a desperate Strindberg-like duel of identities, and Bergman has turned that struggle into a metaphor for the fate of language, art, and consciousness itself.
Saturday, February 3 at 7:30 PM (103 mins)
Shame (1968)
In Person: Liv Ullmann
“Set a tiny step into the future, the film has the inevitability of a common dream . . . One of Bergman’s greatest films, [and] one of the least known” (Pauline Kael). Fleeing a civil war in their country, a couple (Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann), both musicians, retreat to a remote island to grow fruit and cultivate their mutual love. But war overtakes them, exacting its total surrender of pride, privacy, and finally, principle. An oblique response to the escalating war in Vietnam, Shame expands Bergman’s frame from interpersonal conflicts to political ones.
Thursday, February 8 at 7 PM (90 mins)
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Hour of the Wolf intertwines supernatural mysteries with the no-less mysterious torments of creativity. Alma (Liv Ullmann) tells of her life on a remote island with her artist husband (Max von Sydow), who has disappeared, leaving only his diary. The strange occurrences she relates invoke the waking nightmares of gothic horror, yet in creating this eerie tale, Bergman drew on his own experiences of isolation on the island of Fårö: “The demons would come to me and wake me up, and they would stand there and talk to me,” he said.
Thursday, February 15 at 7 PM (91 mins)
Cries and Whispers (1972)
Cries and Whispers depicts the final day of Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who lies in bed with cancer. Her most dear ones—her sisters, Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin), and a companion, Anna (Kari Sylwan)—watch over her. In a film as formal as a clock’s tick, Bergman restricts his palette to colors of blood, his close-ups to the image of the soul. The four women want strength to face life, to overcome fear, to remove the curtain from behind which they look and admire, but do not go forth to touch.
Sunday, February 17 at 6 PM (93 mins)
Autumn Sonata (1978)
The warm autumnal hues of a house on a lake give a false, perhaps wished-for sense of security to the setting, the home of a pastor and his wife, Eva (Liv Ullmann). Very soon the steely tone of love avoided, attempted, and denied overrides any hope. The arrival of Eva’s mother (Ingrid Bergman), a world-traveling concert pianist, for their first meeting in seven years occasions a near-complete opening out of feelings by daughter and mother. Bergman subtly portrays the mother’s love, grief, and guilt as mercurial posturings of a virtuoso performer.
Sunday, February 24 at 6 PM (112 mins)
Saraband (2003)
A blistering sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman’s final work proved that his grasp of human foibles had only sharpened, not mellowed, with age. Still seething after all these years, ex-spouses Marianne and Johan (Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) are reunited when Marianne visits the surly old contrarian on his isolated estate. Slipping into the half-fond, half-insulting dialogue typical of former lovers, the two are soon overshadowed by the ongoing emotional warfare between Johan’s sixty-one-year-old son, Henrik, and Henrik’s teenage daughter, Karin.
Part II: The Silence of God (March/April/May)
The Seventh Seal (1957, 96 mins)
Through a Glass Darkly (1961, 89 mins)
Winter Light (1963, 80 mins)
The Silence (1963, 95 mins)
Fanny and Alexander (1983, 188 mins)
The Magician (1958, 100 mins)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953, 92 mins)
The Virgin Spring (1969, 89 mins)
Part III: A Summer Interlude (June/July/August)
Summer Interlude (1951, 96 mins)
Secrets of Women a.k.a Waiting Women (1952, 107 mins)
Summer with Monika (1953, 96 mins)
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, 108 mins)
Dreams (1955, 87 mins)
Wild Strawberries (1957, 91 mins)
The Devil's Eye (1960, 86 mins)
The Passion of Anna (1969, 101 mins)
Faro Document (1969, 88 mins)
Faro Document 1979 (1979, 121 mins)
The Magic Flute (1975, 135 mins)
Part IV: Lecture/Screening Series with UC Berkeley Professor Linda Rugg (September/October)
Summer Interlude (1951, 96 mins)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953, 92 mins)
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, 108 mins)
The Seventh Seal (1957, 96 mins)
Wild Strawberries (1957, 91 mins)
The Virgin Spring (1960, 89 mins)
Winter Light (1963, 80 mins)
The Silence (1963, 95 mins)
Persona (1966, 85 mins)
Hour of the Wolf (1968, 90 mins)
Shame (1968, 103 mins)
Cries and Whispers (1973, 91 mins)
Fanny and Alexander (1983, 188 mins)—theatrical release version
Part V: Rarities & the Late-Period Works (November/December)
The Touch (1971, 115 mins)
The Serpent's Egg (1977, 119 mins)
From the Life of the Marionettes (1980, 103 mins)
Fanny and Alexander (1983, 312 mins) -TV miniseries
After the Rehearsal (1984, 72 mins)
Salon screenings—Presented in BAMPFA’s intimate Theater 2
The Early Years (March/April/May)
It Rains on Our Love (1946, 95 mins)
Crisis (1946, 93 mins)
A Ship to India (1947, 98 mins)
Music in the Dark (1948, 88 min)
Thirst (1949, 84 mins)
Bergman's Emerging Style (June/July/August)
Port of Call (1948, 99 mins)
Prison (1949, 78 mins)
To Joy (1950, 98 mins)
A Lesson in Love (1954, 96 mins)
Dreams (1955, 87 mins)
Brink of Life (1958, 84 mins)
All These Women (1964, 80 mins)
Bergman's Television Projects (September/October)
Scenes from a Marriage (1973, 284 mins)
Face to Face (1975, 114 mins)
The Blessed Ones (1986, made for TV)
In the Presence of a Clown (1998, made for TV)
Support
Series organized by Senior Film Curator Susan Oxtoby and presented with support from The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation and Norway House Foundation.
Thanks to Monica Enqvist and Linda Zachrison, House of Sweden, Washington, DC; Jan Holmberg, The Ingmar Bergman Foundation; Jon Wengström and Kajsa Hedström, Svenska Institutet; Brian Belovarac, Emily Woodburne, and Ben Crossley-Marra, Janus Films; Benita Kline, Norway House Foundation, San Francisco; and Professor Linda H. Rugg, Department of Scandinavian, UC Berkeley.
We are indebted to Barbro Osher, Consul General of Sweden San Francisco, for her assistance with this retrospective and thank our programming partner Richard Peterson at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, where Liv Ullmann will present her films on February 2 and 4.
About Liv Ullmann
As an actress, Liv Ullmann made her Norwegian stage debut as Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank, and has since played many of the great classical women’s roles in Oslo, Broadway, Australia, and London’s West End theaters. Following several Norwegian film appearances, she became the first non-Swedish actress to work with director Ingmar Bergman, and earned international acclaim for her performances in films directed by Bergman and Jan Troll. She has received many international awards, including the Golden Globe with four wins, three National Society of Film Critics’ Awards, three New York Film Critics’ Circle Awards, and two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. As a theater director, she has staged numerous productions in her native Norway and abroad.
Ullmann is the author of two best-selling books. Her first book, Changing (1976), was a Book-of-the-Month selection; and Choices (1984) received France’s Officer of Arts and Letters Award. As a film director and writer, Ullmann released her first movie, Sofie (1993), worldwide. Two years later, her adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf's Nobel Prize-winning saga, Kristin Lavransdatter, became the most successful Norwegian film in more than twenty years. She then directed Ingmar Bergman’s screenplays for Private Confessions and Faithless (2000), which received international acclaim.
About The Ingmar Bergman Foundation
The Ingmar Bergman Foundation was created by the initiative of Ingmar Bergman himself in 2002. The mission of the foundation is to administrate the Ingmar Bergman Archive and to spread information about Ingmar Bergman and works. The Foundation is furthermore engaged in promoting interest in, and knowledge about Swedish film and culture. The Ingmar Bergman Archive is one of the world’s largest personal archives for an individual filmmaker, and was included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2007. Additionally, the Foundation owns the performing rights to Bergman’s scripts.
About BAMPFA
An internationally recognized arts institution with deep roots in the Bay Area, the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is a forum for cultural experiences that transform individuals and advance the local, national, and global discourse on art and film. BAMPFA is UC Berkeley’s premier visual arts venue, presenting more than 450 film screenings, scores of public programs, and up to twenty exhibitions annually. With its vibrant and eclectic programming, BAMPFA inspires the imagination and ignites critical dialogue through art, film, and other forms of creative expression.
The institution’s collection of more than 19,000 works of art dates from 3000 BCE to the present day and includes important holdings of Neolithic Chinese ceramics, Ming and Qing Dynasty Chinese painting, Old Master works on paper, Italian Baroque painting, early American painting, Abstract Expressionist painting, contemporary photography, and Conceptual art. BAMPFA’s collection also includes more than 17,500 films and videos, including the largest collection of Japanese cinema outside of Japan, impressive holdings of Soviet cinema, West Coast avant-garde film, and seminal video art, as well as hundreds of thousands of articles, reviews, posters, and other ephemera related to the history of film.
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