In Close-Up: Ingmar Bergman

I was twenty-four when I curated my first exhibition. I'd joined the Museum of Television & Radio as a clerk in the bookstore shortly after film school. As a cinephile, I knew next to nothing about television and radio, but here I was surrounded by practically every book on the subject. Within a year, I'd worked my way up to the curatorial department. On my first day there, Ron Simon, my boss and mentor, handed me the number of someone at Sveriges TV: "We have four months to put together a retrospective of Ingmar Bergman's television work." So it began—a baptism by fire.

In organizing the series I was surprised to learn just how many of Bergman's late-period pictures had originated as miniseries for European television—not only Scenes from a Marriage, but Face to Face, Fanny and Alexander, The Magic Flute, After the Rehearsal, and others. Face to Face, for example, had been released by Paramount in the US as a feature-length dubbed print. The original five-part work had yet to be translated into English—that fell to me. Armed with a continuity script, a Swedish translator, and a very patient editor, I produced a fully subtitled version in less than two weeks, followed by the first-ever English-language versions of Bergman's two documentaries on his adopted home island of Fårö. Debuting amidst a city-wide celebration of Bergman's eightieth birthday, the series was a smashing success. I was hooked. 

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Exhibition Catalog