Boasting three Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and more than ten awards at Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals, Swedish director, producer and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential filmmakers of all time.
Since he got his toy cinematograph Laterna Magica at the age of 10, Bergman created over 60 films and documentaries, most of which he both directed and wrote, throughout his life accompanied by film. He projected the most common human feelings and emotions such as longing, doubt, jealousy, loneliness and desolation onto the characters and stories in his films. If film had mainly been regarded as a sheer tool for story-telling and visual entertainment before, Bergman endowed the medium with more depth, i.e. philosophical reflection on life and death, the existence of God and the soul of human beings. He lightened the spiritual world of modern man with his Laterna Magica.
2018 marks the 100-year anniversary of Bergman’s birth. The whole world is celebrating the film auteur who has influenced numerous filmmakers. In such a modern cosmopolitan as Shanghai, we have chosen to interpret his legacy from the perspective of fashion and art. The exhibition Ingmar Bergman and his legacy in fashion and art introduces Bergman and four of his major films: The Seventh Seal, Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, and Fanny and Alexander. The exhibition has its emphasis on the influence that Bergman – as an iconic film maker and reluctant trend setter – has on today’s fashion and art. He was himself uninterested in fashion and dressed in a simple, static style throughout his life. Today his stylistic iconicity is made trendy in Swedish fashion.
We are presenting a special version of the Swedish Institute’s internationally touring exhibition Ingmar Bergman and his legacy in art and fashion in Shanghai. As one of the projects at the 20th China Shanghai International Arts Festival (CSIAF), this version is curated by Swedish-Chinese curator Kaimei Wang as a commission by the Consulate General of Sweden in Shanghai, the organizer of the exhibition. Its co-organizers are Hong Kong Plaza and Qidu Gallery. The exhibition consists of posters and still pictures from Bergman’s films, photos of Bergman, Bergman’s film clips, art and documentary films, fashion objects and costumes. Most of the Bergman photos are exhibited in Shanghai for the first time.
In memory of the world-renowned film auteur Ingmar Bergman
Laterna Magica: Ingmar Bergman and his legacy in art and fashion
Dates: 2018.10.20-11.9
Venue: Ground Floor, Hong Kong Plaza (South), 283 Middle Huaihai Road, Shanghai
Open to public for free
