Free entrance to the Bergman – Truth and Lies exhibition at the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts, Bergman tours at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and Stockholm city tours following in the director’s footsteps. All this and more scheduled for Saturday July 14th, the day Ingmar Bergman would have celebrated his 100th birthday.

The Year of Bergman is being celebrated across the globe, with July 14th – the 100th anniversary of Bergman’s birth – featuring many special events and offerings. The Ingmar Bergman Foundation and the Swedish Film Institute are planning Bergman film screenings at cinemas across Sweden on July 14th. Meanwhile in Stockholm, the Royal Dramatic Theatre, the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts, SF Cinemas and the Stockholm City Museum are working alongside the Ingmar Bergman Foundation to celebrate what would have been Bergman’s 100th birthday. The Royal Dramatic Theatre offers Stockholmers and visiting Bergman enthusiasts alike an exclusive birthday tour, trailing in the footsteps of the great director, with guides offering both Swedish and English. The Swedish Museum of Performing Arts opens its doors to all, with free entrance throughout the day and the special Bergman – Truth and Lies exhibition, while the Stockholm City Museum arranges a city tour entitled Ingmar Bergman’s Stockholm.

Swedish Museum of Performing Arts
Bergman – Truth and Lies presents a chronological tour through the decades and themes of Bergman’s 60-odd years of creative output, both in the theatrical and film worlds. Visitors are offered the chance to peer behind the scenes, catching a glimpse of unique material, including video footage, photographs, interviews, costumes and manuscripts. Set and costume designer Anna Bergman – who worked with Ingmar Bergman during his final years at the Royal Dramatic Theatre – curates the exhibition.
For more information on this and other exhibitions, click here.
Hours 11am–5pm. Free entrance.

Royal Dramatic Theatre – Bergman tours
Ingmar Bergman spent many years at and with the Royal Dramatic Theatre, both as a director and the head of the entire theatre. This guided tour leads visitors to the places where many Bergman stories first took place, revisiting everything from the site of severely misparked cars to forgotten chocolate biscuits. The tour, which lasts around one hour, starts off in the entrance hall and proceeds through the theatre’s winding corridors, stairways and back passageways – behind the scenes in places the public is rarely allowed. Free entrance ­– tickets required.
Times:
1.00 pm Bergman tour in Swedish
2.15 pm Bergman tour in English
3.30 pm Bergman tour in Swedish
4.45 pm Bergman tour in English

Stockholm City Museum: City Tours – Ingmar Bergman’s Stockholm
A city tour across the urban settings which impacted Sweden’s most internationally acclaimed film and theatre director, taking in the posh district of Östermalm and tourist-friendly Old Town (Gamla Stan). Guide: film expert and author Mikaela Kindblom.
Saturday 14 July, 1–2.30pm. Tickets: SEK120, which includes a copy of the newly published Bergman in Stockholm map. The tour is in Swedish.
More information and bookings here.

WRITE LIKE BERGMAN

Nina Fex as Eva in Autumn Sonata

Nina Fex reads Eva’s monologue about childhood and her absent mother.

Leading actors from The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm perform some of the greatest Bergman monologues in our video series produced 2018 during the 100-year anniversary of Ingmar Bergman's birth. 

Produced by Widebeck Media AB for the Ingmar Bergman Foundation and The Royal Dramatic Theatre.

The centenarian’s screenplays are 'the cornerstone of one of the 20th century’s most noteworthy Swedish authorships'.

This year, Ingmar Bergman would have turned 100. Throughout the year, Norstedts is celebrating the iconic filmmaker’s literary works by publishing six grand volumes of largely unseen material, as well as a study of Bergman the author, all in collaboration with the Ingmar Bergman Foundation. In addition, all of Bergman’s manuscripts are being published – The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries will be made available in Swedish for the first time ever.

Ingmar Bergman’s Film Stories will be available as print-on-demand, available via online retailers and in bookshops.

The following titles are currently available on demand:
Torment (1944), Summer Interlude (1951), Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), A Lesson in Love (1954), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), The Magician (1958), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963) and Persona (1966).

Additional titles will be published in time for Ingmar Bergman’s birthday on July 14th.

All 34 Film Stories will be published with afterwords by Jan Holmberg, CEO of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, and in some cases include forewords by the author himself.

'Bergman’s film stories are much more than pilots for the films', states Jan Holmberg. 'Rather than sketches, they are little masterpieces in their own right and belong in the ranks of great 20th-century literature. The fact that most of them are now being made available is a significant cultural milestone'.

Håkan Bravinger, literary director at Norstedts:
'The term film stories was coined by Bergman’s editor, Lasse Bergström. It suits these texts perfectly. They are not screenplays or theatrical scripts, but rather more akin to novellas, with inner psychological acuity and powerful dialogue – to such a degree that they retain their power regardless if one reads them on a page or sees them performed on a stage or screen. They took 60 years to write – and are, as a whole, the cornerstone of one of the 20th century’s most noteworthy Swedish authorships'.

Ingmar Bergman’s Film Stories will initially be published in Swedish. Hedlund Agency is managing international rights.

Stefan Larsson as Emilie in Fanny and Alexander – theatre scene

Stefan Larsson speaks Emilie’s monologue from the theatre scene in Fanny and Alexander where she expresses her feelings for theatre life.

Leading actors from The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm perform some of the greatest Bergman monologues in our video series produced during the 100-year anniversary of Ingmar Bergman's birth. 

Produced by Widebeck Media AB for the Ingmar Bergman Foundation and The Royal Dramatic Theatre.

During the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, which takes place between 8-19 May, a newly restored The Seventh Seal will be screened, along with two new documentaries about Ingmar Bergman.

A newly restored version of The Seventh Seal will be screened in the Cannes Classics section. When it was released, The Seventh Seal was awarded the Jury’s Special Prize at Cannes and is one of the most quoted and plagiarised films of all time.

In the same section Jane Magnusson's upcoming film Bergman - A Year in a Life will be screened for the first time.

Director Margarethe von Trotta's new documentary Searching for Ingmar Bergman will also premiere at Cannes. Von Trotta was highly appreciated by Ingmar Bergman, and her film follows in the filmmaker’s footsteps, questioning the new generation about the place left by the Swedish master.

Read more

The 2018 Bergman Jubilee has passed its quarter point, with results far exceeding initial expectations. Events have kicked off to a wonderful start both in Sweden and abroad. A few first-quarter highlights: countless film screenings have been held across the globe for large audiences, with stellar reviews. Exhibitions have been lauded by visitors and the press alike. Fanny and Alexander was very well-received at a London theatre. Bergman the writer has finally had his big breakthrough...

BFI (British Film Institute) Southbank has officially rounded off its Ingmar Bergman: A Definitive Film Season series. This large survey of Bergman’s work, however, includes films such as The Seventh Seal (1957) and Persona (1966) being distributed to cinemas across Great Britain and Ireland. Little-seen film The Touch (1971) was re-released in British cinemas, and was received by critics as a forgotten masterpiece complete with flaws. ‘A grown-up film for grown-ups,’ according to The Guardian.

– The Ingmar Bergman retrospective certainly got the BFI’s new year off to a flying start, exceeding all our expectations in terms of audience numbers at BFI Southbank, and bringing Bergman’s work to a whole new generation of film lovers. The Swedish Film Institute’s fantastic technical work on Bergman’s catalogue has enabled audiences across the UK to see these films in the best possible condition in cinemas, on BFI blu-rays and BFI Player, declared Julie Pearce, Head of Distribution and Programme Operations at BFI.

‘Bergmania’ is in full swing on the British Isles, but no less apparent on the other side of the Atlantic. In New York, the highly-esteemed Film Forum in West Village screened 47 of Bergman’s films, of which 30 had been recently restored by the Swedish Film Institute. Time Out called it the ‘year’s cinematic event’, and according to Bruce Goldstein at Film Forum, the Bergman retrospective attracted their biggest audience numbers ever for a single filmmaker.

Many events are being held in Bergman’s Swedish homeland. The Cinemateket in Stockholm is screening each one of Bergman’s feature films throughout the year, one on every Wednesday. For the first time in many years, Bergman’s fellow Swedes are showing incredible interest in his work. In Gothenburg, the same is happening on Sundays at Hagabion. SF is screening one Bergman film per month at select cinemas across Sweden. The April film of the month is Through a Glass Darkly (1961). A recent retrospective in Rome just came to a close, with every single screening (!) selling out. In Vienna, the Austrian Film Museum screened Bergman’s entire filmic catalogue, and according to Die Presse, offered ‘a cleansing acid bath for the soul’.

All told, 60,000 people have thus far attended Bergman film screenings at cinemas the glove over. Screenings continue to be held throughout the year in Tel Aviv, Singapore, Detroit, Helsinki, Beijing, Oslo, Montreal, Madrid, Moscow, Prague, Berlin, Washington DC, Hong Kong, Bogota, Taipei, Chicago, Paris, Toronto, Ljubljana, Geneva, Mexico City…

BERGMAN ON STAGE

Fanny and Alexander premiered at the age-old Old Vic Theatre in London on 21 February. The performance has been very well-received. Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey) is ‘superb’ as Helena Ekdahl, according to critics for The Independent, while The Observer declared that the performance ‘bursts its way into your heart’. Swedish critics who attended the British performance were pleased. Lars Ring wrote in Swedish broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet that the performance ‘impressed’, while Johan Hilton called The Old Vic’s staging ‘wonderful’. 

FÖRFATTAREN BERGMAN

In Sweden, Norstedts kicked off the 2018 Jubilee by publishing a record number of Bergman publications, comprising six magnificent volumes of Bergman’s own writings and 34 stories he wrote about his films. First to hit the market was the newly published Författaren Ingmar Bergman (Ingmar Bergman, the writer), penned by Jan Holmberg, CEO of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which received raving reviews. According to leading Swedish broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet, this book is ‘a welcome, essential addition to the already rich collection of Bergman literature’. A few weeks later, a new edition of Laterna Magica with foreword by JMG Le Clézio, anthology Artiklar, essäer och föredrag (Articles, Essays and Lectures) and Arbetsboken 1955–1974 (Workbook 1955-1974) (1975–2001 due later this autumn) were all published. In Swedish Expressen, Martina Montelius referred to the writings in the latter publication as ‘outstanding’, adding that she learned more about life and art in Bergman’s workbooks than she learned ‘in anything else over at least the past seven years’. All publications are as of yet only available in Swedish.

OTHER BERGMAN EVENTS

In Stockholm, the exhibit Bergman’s Costumes at the Hallwyl Museum, with accompanying lecture, welcomed great visitor numbers, while an exhibition and tour of Bergman locations is in full swing at Filmstaden Råsunda.
The Ingmar Bergman Foundation organised an exhibition based upon the story of how one of Bergman’s most renowned works came about. Fanny and Alexander: ‘A never-ending, whispering conversation’ premiered at the BFI Southbank in London in January, and is now featured at the House of Sweden in Washington, DC, alongside the exhibition Bergman Moods by Nina Sandström and Magnus Länje. The exhibitions will subsequently travel to additional countries over the course of the year.

The Ingmar Bergman Foundation and the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre are co-producing Bergman: Monologues – a film series featuring actors as they interpret a number of Bergman’s most infamous monologues. Three episodes – featuring Lena Endre, Elin Klinga and Reine Brynolfsson – have been released so far, with an additional nine in the works. Another series we at the Ingmar Bergman Foundation are producing is entitled Anecdotes, which involves people from Bergman’s life, including Leif Zern, Christina Schollin and Stig Björkman, sharing personal stories of their time with Bergman.

Nearly 60,000 books arriving fresh from the printers, a publication produced by the Ingmar Bergman Foundation along with Norstedts and LäroMedia. This special publication of Fanny and Alexander, complete with foreword by Swedish Minister of Culture and Democracy Alice Bah Kuhnke, will be distributed to students graduating from Swedish high schools in 2018. Around 400 schools across the country – from Kiruna in the north to Ystad in the south – will present the book to their students later this spring.

The Year of Bergman is just that – an entire year of celebrations, with events around the globe taking place throughout 2018 – with plenty left to anticipate and enjoy. Here in Sweden alone, we look forwards to the Bergman exhibition at the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts in Stockholm, Bergman Week on Fårö, the Bergman Festival at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and last but certainly not least, Ingmar Bergman’s birthday on 14 July. More information on this and much more will be released over the coming months.

Visit our calendar for updated information, with new 2018 Year of Bergman global events added on a continuous basis.

Three separate foundations exist in Ingmar Bergman’s name. We each have our own specific objectives, but all work to administer and protect Bergman’s legacy.

The Ingmar Bergman Foundation administers Ingmar Bergman’s archives and rights. We are based in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Bergman Center Foundation is a visitor’s cultural centre on the Swedish island of Fårö, which amongst other activities, organises the annual festival Bergman Week.

The Bergman Estate on Fårö Foundation is an artist’s residence, comprising Bergman’s properties on the island of Fårö.