Ingmar Bergman

Fårö Document 1979

Fårö Document 1979

Midway through his time in Germany, Bergman returned to Fårö for his second documentary exploration of the remote Swedish island he loved and the socio­economic realities experienced by those who lived there. Longer, more optimistic, and less ascetic than its predecessor, this film charts a calendar year in the life of the island’s 673 inhabitants, many of whom he observes working tirelessly shearing sheep, thatching roofs, and slaughtering livestock, as well as going about various communal rituals. Distilled from twenty-eight hours of material, Fårö Document 1979 is a lyrical depiction of life’s cyclical nature.

Film Info

  • Sweden
  • 1979
  • 104 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.37:1
  • Swedish

Available In

Collector's Set

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Blu-ray Box Set

30 Discs

$239.96

Fårö Document 1979
Credits
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Producer
Lars-Owe Carlberg
Music
Sigvard Huldt
Music
Svante Pettersson
Cinematographer
Arne Carlsson
Editor
Sylvia Ingemarsson
Sound
Lars C. Lundberg
Gaffer
Daniel Bergman

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Ingmar Bergman

Director

Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman

The Swedish auteur began his artistic career in the theater but eventually navigated toward film—"the great adventure," as he called it—initially as a screenwriter and then as a director. Simply put, in the fifties and sixties, the name Ingmar Bergman was synonymous with European art cinema. Yet his incredible run of successes in that era—including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and The Virgin Spring, haunting black-and-white elegies on the nature of God and death—merely paved the way for a long and continuously dazzling career that would take him from the daring “Silence of God” trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) to the existential terrors of Cries and Whispers to the family epic Fanny and Alexander, with which he “retired” from the cinema. Bergman died in July 2007, leaving behind one of the richest bodies of work in the history of cinema.