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Bringing Bergman closer to India

Journalist-cum-filmmaker Gunna Bergdahl.

Journalist-cum-filmmaker Gunnar Bergdahl arrived on his maiden trip to India for someone he has been long associated with, the nine-time Academy Award-nominated Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. He tells Madhur Tankha that he aims to make the latter’s timeless cinema accessible to the Indian film enthusiasts.

His claim to fame is doing two rare interviews on celluloid with one of the greatest filmmakers of all times. And it is this closeness with Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman that has brought journalist-cum-filmmaker Gunnar Bergdahl to India.

Turning up in the Capital this past week for a special retrospective on Bergman, Gunnar said he was brimming with excitement at the prospect of interacting with Indians on his maiden trip to the country.

“I have always dreamt of visiting the golden beaches of Kerala, but could never make a trip to your country. Palador Pictures and the Embassy of Sweden have invited me to India because I made two interesting films on Bergman. His films have moved, inspired and influenced a host of filmmakers and audiences across the world. No wonder that he is often called the greatest cinematic artist ever. I am glad that his masterpieces will now be seen by film lovers in the country,” adds the Stockholm-born documentary filmmaker.

Stating that it was heartening for him to be a part of the retrospective that will travel to six cities, Gunnar says: “I want to make sure that his work is accessible to film enthusiasts in India. I first wanted Bergman to write a foreword for my book. Later, he told me that I would have to interview him. So I wrote a long foreword from the interview given by him. After going through the foreword, Bergman was extremely pleased with the result and told me that I was a serious person.”

Considering himself lucky to have shared some time with the profound filmmaker, Gunnar says Bergman may not be alive today but his passion for the possibilities and challenges of filmmaking will be an inspiration for ever. “In fact, I once asked Bergman doesn’t he ever gets tired of watching all the films. Laughingly he told me that filmmaking is an expanding universe. The more you look, the more you find. He said creativity is an extraordinary help against destructive demons. Even when he was a ripe old man he still had curiosity for cinema.”

Admitting that getting the nine-time Academy Award-nominated Swedish filmmaker to talk was one of his career’s most extraordinary moments, Gunnar says ‘The Voice of Bergman” was his first film. “The interview was a coup of sorts as Bergman had become quite recluse. The conversation was in Swedish and sub-titled in English. He spoke only about films and literature and forbade me to ask anything relating to his private life. The documentary is a profound journey to the very heart of one of the greatest film directors of all times, an inexhaustible source of information and inspiration.”

The second film on the Swedish filmmaker was “Ingmar Bergman: Intermezzo”.

Pointing out that Bergman depicted bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his explorations of the human condition, Gunnar says: “Having worked in cinema for 55 years, Bergman’s experiences as artist and director were unique. He was a specialist on silent film and explored boundaries of filmmaking. He made films that were timeless in the context of European and Swedish people. He experimented and showed magical moments like in the film ‘Wild Strawberries’.”

As a youngster, Gunnar wasn’t enamoured of Begman. “In fact, I had described him as a bourgeois then because he had said that his film ‘The Shame’ was a comment on Vietnam. At that time I was supporting the anti-war movement that was against imperialism of the United States.”

Shedding light on his film “The Voice of Ljudmila”, Gunnar says it was a film about Ukrainian widow caught in the Chernobyl disaster. “Horrors of nuclear powers had been highlighted in the film. The film was a significant one as it recreated the catastrophe. It brought about a change in world policy and change in East Europe and Communist regime. Bergman liked the film and said that Lena Andrea, the protagonist, was so good at her craft that even an eight-minute role of hers was sufficient to sweep the audience off its feet. But I had chosen Andrea to play the role because of her acting prowess in ‘Faithful’.”

Speaking about his background in Sweden, Gunnar says in the 1970s he was studying journalism at the University of Goteborg. “I became a programmer of a small art cinema later a film critic. As of half way through the Eighties, I worked for the Goteborg Film Festival where I got the opportunity to travel extensively around the world.”

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