On the Occasion of the Ingmar Bergman Symposium

In the framework of the exhibition "Ingmar Bergman. Von Lüge und Wahrheit (Truth and Lies)," a project of the Deutschen Kinemathek, a symposium will be held in cooperation with the Einstein Forum Potsdam on April 29. As the title of the exhibition indicates, the field of tension between truth and lies in Bergman’s filmic oeuvre is to be gauged from different perspectives. The author Ingmar Bergman always intensively drew from the story of his childhood and family, particularly from his own professional and private relationships, transforming them more or less encoded into the subjects of his movies. He thus provides possible interpretations, but also plays games with the interested viewer. Like little Alexander in Fanny och Alexander (1982), who much to the displeasure of his stepfather, a strict Protestant bishop, blurs the boundaries between truth and lies with his excessive imagination, Bergman, too, creates artistic mirages between dream and reality from his personal universe of images. Alexander, as with the main characters in almost all of Bergman's movies, is Bergman's alter ego. In his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, the director, who always claimed to have suffered under his strict father, a Protestant pastor, writes: "I believe I came through best, because I trained myself to be a liar. I created an exterior persona that had little in common with my true self. Since I couldn’t keep mask and self apart, these damages had consequences, even when I was already long an adult, and they affected my creativity. Sometimes I have to find consolation in the fact that everyone who has lived a lie, loves the truth."