I don't think there's any rush, Criterion has plenty of time before Hell freezes overGreathinker wrote:it would let them capitalize on more of their titles before bluray takes over the market.
On Five: Criterion Collection Blog
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
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- HerrSchreck
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- Thomas J.
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- Cinephrenic
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New blog post is up. Great piece of writing on Bergman, check it out.
- Tom Hagen
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Great stuff. I am left feeling jealous that I don't have the time and money to take such a trip myself, and hopeful that this trip involved Criterion business for future Bergman releases. Hopefully the Fårö Documents will eventually appear in the Collection either as titles or as supplements to other releases.Cinephrenic wrote:New blog post is up. Great piece of writing on Bergman, check it out.
- ellipsis7
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Slightly damping is this news...Tom Hagen wrote:Great stuff. I am left feeling jealous that I don't have the time and money to take such a trip myself, and hopeful that this trip involved Criterion business for future Bergman releases. Hopefully the Fårö Documents will eventually appear in the Collection either as titles or as supplements to other releases.Cinephrenic wrote:New blog post is up. Great piece of writing on Bergman, check it out.
Island home of Ingmar Bergman 'could be sold to highest bidder'
Gwladys Fouché reports on the strange case of the great Swedish film-maker's home on the Baltic Sea island of Fårö, which looks set for auction in accordance with a will made three decades ago
Friday July 11, 2008
guardian.co.uk
It's the windswept sanctuary where one of the world's greatest directors got the inspiration for his movies, a spot so intricately associated with the introspective mood of his work that it attracts legions of film fans every year. But now, the home of Ingmar Bergman, on the Baltic Sea island of Fårö, is under threat.
The house and its contents are expected to be auctioned off by Christie's next year unless sponsors can be found to fund a cultural centre that would preserve the home as it is. "The nightmare scenario is that the house is sold off and everything inside goes with it," explains Jannike Åhlund, one of the organisers of a project to turn Bergman's house into a home for artists.
Like Woody Allen, who is closely associated with Manhattan, Bergman is inextricably linked with Fårö, an outcrop situated about 87 miles off Sweden's south-east coast. The island's barren landscape has featured in at least seven of his movies, including Through a Glass Darkly, Scenes from a Marriage and Persona, contributing to their existentialist mood.
Fårö is also where the celebrated director lived for four decades after falling in love with the island in the early 60s while scouting for locations for Through a Glass Darkly. He built his future home in 1966-1967, moved in soon after and lived there until his death last year.
"Few films are so intricately connected to a place as Bergman's films are connected to Fårö and have had such an impact on world cinema," says Åhlund, who co-organises the Bergman Week, a festival of theatre and cinema celebrating the spirit of Bergman on Fårö every year. "We want to use his home as a retreat for creative people to be inspired and work on their own projects. They would live there for say, one week or two weeks at a time ... I think many film-makers would dream of experimenting [in] such a place."
Another part of the project is to turn a nearby disused school into a cultural centre where visitors could watch Bergman's films and find out more about his stage and cinema work. Aside from his films, Bergman was also a celebrated stage director in his home country. If the house is auctioned off, it is feared that Bergman's furniture and many of his possessions could become scattered.
"He had many of the props he used for his movies and plays at home," says Åhlund. "For instance, Bergman's children recently lent us some sketches from his staging of The Ghost Sonata [by playwright August Strindberg] for an exhibition we were organising. They were just hanging on the walls of the house."
In case of an auction, his papers, including his screenplays, would be safe as they were donated to a dedicated archive for safekeeping years ago. Part of the problem with preserving the house is that Bergman's will, which dates from the 70s, specifies that his home "should be sold to the highest bidder".
No other information concerning his house has been added since then. Another is that Bergman's estate, which includes nine different parties with eight children and one grandchild, appear to have different views about what to do with the house. "Some favour our project while others want to sell and get their money," says Åhlund.
At a public meeting last month in Fårö, one of Bergman's sons, Daniel, said selling the house to the highest bidder might not necessarily be the best solution. But the rest of the family are keeping publicly tight-lipped on the subject. The project has support from the local municipality, which has agreed to hold off selling the school while Åhlund and her colleagues put their plan together. One potential financial investor has also emerged, but their support is conditional on all other parties agreeing to the project.
One party which appears uninterested in preserving the home of one of the country's most famous artists is the Swedish state. During an interpellation at the Swedish parliament earlier this year concerning Bergman's estate, culture secretary Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth said that the government was not in the business of rescuing houses. So now Åhlund and her colleagues are racing against time to put a plan together that would preserve Bergman's house and its contents. "It's a very beautiful spot by the sea, a very special place," she says.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
- Zazou dans le Metro
- Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:01 am
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Spookily, I have just read this after seeing Assayas' L'Heure d'été.Island home of Ingmar Bergman 'could be sold to highest bidder'
Assayas, a keen Bergmanite and author of Conversations with B deals in this film with just such a post will predicament. Maybe he got the idea from one of his off the record chats with Ingmar?
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On Five: Criterion Collection Blog
I also noticed in the blog that The Phantom Carriage also was shown at the fesitval with a new orchestral score. Hopefully that will mean that the film will be coming soon to Criterion.Cinephrenic wrote:New blog post is up. Great piece of writing on Bergman, check it out.
- sidehacker
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New post regarding the pressure of putting together another release of Chungking Express.
- Ovader
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Re: On Five: Criterion Collection Blog
When in Rome... about Antonio Salvatori, the original color timer on Rosi’s The Moment of Truth (listed as a distinct possibility) and Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman, and encountering Giuseppe Rotunno.
- Matt
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm
Re: On Five: Criterion Collection Blog
This kind of post is exactly what Criterion should have been doing since the invention of blogs. There's more interesting information in that than in the entirety of their Facebook posts.
- Jeff
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:49 pm
- Location: Denver, CO
Re: On Five: Criterion Collection Blog
Agreed. The Mike Wallace interview that is linked in the article is worth a look too. Turns out that Phillip Morris cigarettes represent a man's kind of mildness. Wallace hits hard, and Douglas comes back harder. It's interesting to hear Douglas talking about communism in Hollywood a year or so before hiring Dalton Trumbo for Spartacus. His sharp responses and the way he handles Wallace gave me a new found respect for an actor I already adored.Matt wrote:This kind of post is exactly what Criterion should have been doing since the invention of blogs. There's more interesting information in that than in the entirety of their Facebook posts.
Lots more of the Wallace interviews here.
- Cinephrenic
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Re: On Five: Criterion Collection Blog
What a treasure, thanks!
- Max von Mayerling
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Re: On Five: Criterion Collection Blog
I'm feeling like I need a man's kind of mildness.