Ingmar Bergman: The Man who asked hard Questions

Imagine that you are on an island. Look around.
Some will see a windswept pine tree on the little island of Fårö off the Swedish coast, Ingmar Bergman’s haven for the final years of his life. Others will see a cinematic fresco in five screens: white dresses and parasols in a park, a boy forced to kiss his stepfather’s hand, a dejected sheep being drained of blood, two women’s faces merging, the director laughing loudly, a crusading knight playing chess with Death on an empty beach...

Ingmar Bergman is one of the world’s foremost filmmakers ever, not just through the extent of his work, but for the religious, moral and existential questions he kept returning to for six decades in such masterpieces The Seventh Seal, Through a Glass Darkly, Persona, Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander... He has been described as the man who asked the hard questions. But there is not one single answer to the question of what turned Bergman into Bergman. A number of interpretations are presented here — thirty two to be exact.

The installation offers two ways of approaching Ingmar Bergman’s multifaceted universe. Either you gaze at the horizon, as he himself did on the island. If that leaves you none the wiser, you may take the shortcut through the branches of the tree.

The Man Who Asked Hard Questions was initiated by the Swedish Institute and produced by Mondo Arkitekter in Stockholm.
Exhibition architect: Anders Rabenius
Project leader: Annmari Kastrup
Editorial board: Jannike Åhlund, Marie Nyreröd, Jan-Erik Billinger, Stig Björkman
Writer: Lars Forsberg
Video director: Henrik Björlin
Art director: Henrik Nygren
Graphic designer: Anton Gårdsäter
Translations: Martin Thomson
Exhibition builder: Sam Fischer
Technical production: Benny Britten-Austin
Panorama photographs: Björn Keller