Lauren Shantall
One of the main motivating factors behind this year’s Focus on Swedish and Scandinavian Cinema is the opportunity of celebrating the 80th birthday of the accomplished Ingmar Bergman on July 14 – an event that is to be celebrated across the cinematic world by the staging of Bergman retrospectives. It also coincides almost perfectly with the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
The main thrust of the programme is thus a fairly representative, although quite Spartan, Bergman retrospective that pays homage to the great Swedish master.
The five films selected rate among Bergman’s greatest cinematic achievements. Of particular note is the 1966 masterpiece Persona, a self-reflective, complex film that is acutely aware of its medium and its constructed nature.
The main attraction, though, is the screening of The Voice of Bergman, an extended interview conducted by the international film critic and director of the Goteborg film fetsival for the past five years, Gunnar Bergdahl.
Bergdahl was privileged enough to be granted a celluloid chat with the elusive, media-shy director, with the proviso that Bergman could decide at which festivals it could be screened.
Bergdahl himself will be introducing his film. As the festival’s invited guest, he will also be hosting the focus, presenting a lecture on Bergman and discussing Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, Smiles of a Summer Night and Faro Document.
Other films on the programme showcase the very best of Scandinavian film. The small Bo Widerberg retrospective sees the South African premiere of his last film, All Things Fair, which was completed shortly before his death. Widerberg won the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival for this film and gained international recognition for Raven’s End in 1963, which will also be screened.
The focus pays homage to the prodigious output of the gifted Danish director Lars von Trier, whom South African audiences will be most familiar with through Breaking the Waves, which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, and is included in the line-up. Don’t miss Transformer a 52 minute documentary tracing Von Trier’s creative development.
Finally, the scanty sample of four contemporary Swedish films includes Pal Sletaune’s surprising JunkMail, Sunday’s Children, directed by Daniel Bergman (Bergman’s son), and written by Bergman himself, which is a sequel to Ingmar’s 1992 Cannes prize- winner The Best Intentions.
Almost all the films on show have been sourced with the co-operation of the Swedish Film Institute, and are co-curated by James Polly, the festival steering committee member in charge of film, and his assistant Mignon Coetzee. In all, the films make for intriguing, sometimes challenging viewing.