For Bergman Fans, Film Is the Great Adventure

A new retrospective on the late, legendary auteur, Ingmar Bergman, who passed away last year at the age of 89, will unspool weekends from July through December at the IFC Center in New York. Entitled “Ingmar Bergman: Film Is the Great Adventure,” the series includes twenty of Bergman’s best films, including Smiles of A Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Virgin Spring (1960) and Scenes from A Marriage (1973). Fanny and Alexander (1982), Bergman’s swan song to moviemaking, will be presented in its rare, uncut, original form for a one-week engagement in late December. The series is part of the IFC Center’s ongoing “Weekend Classics” program, with matinee screenings at 11 a.m. each Friday through Sunday.

A remarkably influential, prolific and creative moviemaker, Ingmar Bergman was born in Sweden in 1918. The son of a Lutheran minister, Bergman’s avid interest in film and theater, as well as his creativity, began early in his life when, at the age of nine, he traded his toy soldiers for an old magic lantern that he used to create backdrops for puppet shows. While at college, he wrote and directed plays and, in 1946, made his feature-film debut with Crisis. Bergman’s subsequent career encompassed more than 60 films and television works, most of them critically praised. Before he passed away at his home on the island of Fårö, Sweden on July 30, 2007, Bergman was considered by many critics to be the world’s greatest living movie director. In describing his approach to film directing, as opposed to live theater, Bergman once said: “The theater is like a faithful wife. Film is the great adventure—the costly, exacting mistress.”

And now audiences can experience and celebrate Bergman’s great adventures every weekend, thanks to the IFC Center.

INGMAR BERGMAN: “FILM IS THE GREAT ADVENTURE”
Weekends at 11:00am, July – December at IFC Center
July 18 – 20: Port of Call (1948)
July 25 – 27: Virgin Spring (1960)
August 1 – 3: Secrets of Women (1952)
August 15 – 17: The Seventh Seal (1957)
August 22 – 24: A Lesson in Love (1954)
August 29 – September 1: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
September 5 – 7: The Devil’s Eye (1960)
September 19 – 21: The Rite (1969)
September 26 – 28: The Magician (1958)
The schedule for the second half of the program will be announced in August