Reverse Shot’s Eric Hynes was lucky to be selected for one of the sweetest gigs in the film-festival world: a trip to Sweden’s remote, greatly uninhabited Fårö Island, where Ingmar Bergman lived for decades and died in 2007, for the annual Bergmanvecken (Bergman Week). It’s worth all the Torontos, Venices, and Cannes combined—that is, if you still have that unadulterated love for the dour Swedish master and prize things like, oh, natural splendor and unspoiled beauty. Hynes wrote about his experiences on the island for Moving Image Source. Definitely dig in: he touches upon Bergman and Liv Ullman’s love (literally etched into the wood of his home); the impressive and always a bit scattershot lineup of the festival; Bergman’s private video collection (yes, he owned Play It Again, Sam and The Hitcher) and of course, the place itself. Hynes is especially lovely when describing the sensation of just being there, “when the early summer light simply lingers deep into the night, where the rocky coastline antagonizes the oddly placid sea, when a lightning storm slowly rolls landward, in old red barns that reveal themselves as arthouses that feel more like churches, where wild strawberries actually grow underfoot.” Read on.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
