In addition to his film career spanning 55 years, Ingmar Bergman is famed for his knowledge of the Swedish silent-film period. With his experience as artist and as film-maker, he is an ongoing source of information and inspiration. The Voice of Bergman has no other aim than to allow Bergman to expound on the topic: an 87-minute documentary with only the person and the voice of Bergman talking about his relationship with film and his affinity with the close up. The film is not interrupted by narration, music or illustrative film fragments, so an intimate mood is evoked in which Bergman talks about his passion for film-makers (e.g. Dreyer, Tati, Tarkovski) and film-making. The Voice of Bergman is not about Bergman’s own film or theatre work, but about a film-lover investigating the history of film and its significance: a film for everyone interested in the beautiful and weird world of cinema.The Voice of Bergman is the first documentary by Gunnar Bergdahl, director of the Gothenburg Film Festival (that coincides with Rotterdam every year), a film-lover and Swede who knows his Bergman. The film is divided up into eight chapters, including ‘Word and Image’, ‘the Music of the Close-Up’, ‘The Insanity of Film’ and ‘The Big Mystery’.
