4 July, 2011 15:23

Record attendance at the summer’s Bergman Week!

Sunday night, the eighth edition of the Bergman Week on Fårö wrapped with a sound installation on the theme of ”The Sounds of Bergman’s landscape” amongst the ”rauks” (huge lime stones) on the island. The arrangers were content with ticket sales having increased 20 percent from the previous year.

The Bergman Week, sometimes priding itself with being ”the world’s smallest film festival”, is eager to keep its intimate profile for guests and audiences alike, but the festival organizers are of course happy that more than 3100 tickets were sold.

Andrey Zvyagintsev, who recently won a Special Jury Prize in Cannes for his most recent feature Elena, said in a conversation that Ingmar Bergman had played a vital role in his life.

– I was seventeen when I saw Autumn Sonata in my hometown Novosibirsk. When I left the cinema, my shirt was completely soaked from tears, Zvyagintsev recalls. That film made me understand what it is possible to express through the film medium.

Veteran director István Szabó, who delivered this year’s ”Bergman Lecture”, was very moved by his meeting with Bergman’s Fårö, but most of all impressed by the audience.

– It is truly fantastic with all these interested and engaged people attending seminars and screenings! Where do they all come from?, he said in amazement.

The exhibition ”Fårö – Ingmar Bergman’s Filmic Landscape”, the first exhibition at the Bergman Center, has already attracted a large audience. With film clips, interviews and photographs it depicts the meeting between the internationally famed director and the locals, as well as the many-faceted dimensions of the landscape that Ingmar Bergman chose for seven of his films – including the two Fårö Documents. The exhibition runs through the summer at the Bergman Center.

– We already have lots of ideas for the Bergman Week 2012, says Jannike Åhlund, director of the event. We really hope that we can continue to have the old island school as our base and that we finally will manage to secure financing for the Bergman Center. The exhibition is just an example of a full range of public activities we envision for a fully developed Bergman Center on Fårö.