The late Ingmar Bergman was very close and important to the Göteborg International Film Festival. He was the festival’s honorary president and showed great interest in the activities of the organisation.The festival is represented in the council of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.
– In the first place you feel very sad because a human being has passed away. It is always sad when a person dies, and it always comes unexpected. Of course my thoughts go out to his family, nearest and dearest. Personally, I feel strongly affected by this after a recent visit to the fourth Bergman Week on the island of Fårö. There you feel closer to Bergman, even though he didn’t participate personally this year. Last year I listened to him speaking about, among other things, the creation of Winter Light, and it was a very special, almost magical experience, says Marit Kapla, director of the festival.
Göteborg International Film Festival will, as earlier posted, honour the legendary director with a grand Bergman retrospective, during the 31:st festival, in January-February, 2008, when around 50 of the director’s feature films will be screened.
– The plan was to celebrate a living director’s 90th birthday with a retrospective. His work is worth discovering and rediscovering over and over again. Even if many of the films are available on DVD, it is a totally different experience to see them on the big screen. Our retrospective will now turn in to a posthumous homage, which will give the event a different character. But we are proud to be able to honour the festival’s Honorary President in this way and we sincerely hope that our retrospective will contribute to keeping his work alive, now that he himself is gone, says Marit Kapla.
Bergman at GIFF
The first Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award (TIBIDA) was awarded at the 30th Göteborg International Film Festival in 2007. The award went to British Andrea Arnold for her Red Road. Bergman himself commented the award in his usual straightforward way:
"The award is a way of encouraging young filmmakers to deal with really important issues at a time when the film industry has more and more assumed the shape and form of a butchery and fornication business!"
The second TIBIDA will be awarded at the 31st Göteborg International Film Festival, January 25 – February 4, 2008.
The fifth Bergman Week will take place June 24-29, 2008.
Ingmar Bergman was dedicated, and participated in, a number of publications, produced by the festival’s film magazine Filmkonst. They can be ordered via e-mail filmkonst@filmfestival.org
They are:
* Tre dagar med Bergman by Stig Björkman/Olivier Assayas, 1992 – translation of an issue of the French Cahiers du Cinéma in cooperation with Stig Björkman. Filmkonst no 13
* En liten bok om Hasse by Jannike Åhlund and Leif Furhammar, preface by Ingmar Bergman, 1993. Filmkonst no 16
* Bergmans favoriter/Bergman’s List, 1996 (Swedish and English edition). Filmkonst.
* Bergmans 1900-tal – en hyllning till svensk film från Victor Sjöström till Lukas Moodysson/Bergman’s 20th Century, 2000 (Swedish and English edition). The 35 films, chosen, and written about, by Bergman were screened during one month, right before the festival 2000.) Filmkonst.
* Anteckningar från Bergmanveckan 2006/The Ingmar Bergman Notebook, 2007 (Swedish and English text). Filmkonst nr 105
Göteborg International Film Festival has co-produced a number of films with Bergman as main character. Those are:
* Ett samtal med Ingmar Bergman, by Gunnar Bergdahl, 1997, shown on Swedish television during the festival’s 20th jubilee in 1997.
* Bergmans röst/The Voice of Bergman a longer version of the interview, which premiered at the Biennale in Venice, in 1997, and after that has been screened on hundreds of festivals all over the world.
* Ingmar Bergman: Intermezzo by Gunnar Bergdahl, 2002
The interview was made for the festival’s 25th jubilee and was also shown on Swedish television. The international premiere took place at the Cannes festival in the Directors’ Fortnight section.
During the 29th festival 2006, a section called Bergmans val: Bergman vid filmens källsprång – stumfilmsfavoriter, was part of the programme. It consisted of six, by Bergman chosen and commented, silent films, with programme texts by Bergman.