Sat, Oct 20 / 3 pm
Sun, Oct 21 / 5 pm
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
1966, Sweden, 83 min
Swedish with English subtitles
Saturday, October 20 Introduced by George Toles.
By the mid-sixties, Bergman had already conjured many of the cinema’s most unforgettable images. But with the radical Persona, he attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference. Acted with astonishing nuance and shot in stark contrast and soft light by Sven Nykvist, the influential Persona is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth.
*Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actress / The USA National Society of Film Critics
George Toles is a screenwriter and educator born in Buffalo, N.Y. As a filmmaker, he is best known for his longtime collaboration with Canadian director/co-writer
Guy Maddin; together they have worked on the screenplays of more than half a dozen motion pictures, including Careful (1992), The Saddest Music in the World (2003),
and My Winnipeg (2007). He is a distinguished professor of English and chair of Film Studies at the University of Manitoba, and the author of A House Made of Light:
Essays on the Art of Film (2001), Paul Thomas Anderson (2016) He has offered advice and inspiration to many generations of film students.
No name is more synonymous with the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema than Ingmar Bergman, a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. This year is the centenary of Ingmar Bergman, who has proven to be, from any perspective, one of the most important film directors of the last century. These eight films are his most challenging, thought provoking, stringent, emotional documents in a career which spanned 50 years. All of these films have recently been restored in new digital formats by Janus Films and are currently touring North America. Curated by Rory Runnells and Winnipeg Film Group Cinematheque. Special Thanks to Rory Runnells and Susan Algie.
Twilight Room of The Soul: The Universe of Ingmar Bergman is generously sponsored by George Toles, Kate, Ron and Jennifer Robinson, and Jonathan Walter.
Generously sponsored by William F. White International and IATSE 856.
