It is hardly controversial to state that Ingmar Bergman is still almost exclusively defined as an art filmmaker and auteur in Sweden and, especially, beyond. This chapter focuses on some particular issues and areas that have largely fallen by the wayside within Bergman scholarship, in large part due to the historical, accumulative impact of auteurist approaches, and that arguably form the very antithesis of what is generally associated with Bergman – notably, popularity, fashion, superficiality. In this context, it is of no small interest that Bergman so skilfully, and well before the existence of professional public relations people and other spin doctors, was able to manipulate journalists at will, almost as a one-man show, literally directing them as if they were players on stage. If Bergman can be regarded as a celebrity, then gossip is a viable and necessary object of study.

In the aftermath of the MeToo movement, during an ongoing pandemic, and in the midst of repeated demands for a 50/50 split between men and women in above-the-line positions, this book analyzes and interrogates the politics of gender focusing on the Swedish film industry, often considered to be the most "gender equal" film industry worldwide. While this gender equality (with a considerable proportion of women behind the camera) is much due to policies carried out of the state funded Swedish Film Institute, women filmmakers in Sweden still struggle with the same problems as do women in other national film industries. These problems entail having smaller production and distribution budgets than men and working in an environment involving recurring scandals of gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

This open access book looks behind the statistics and explores the often complex cultural, legal, and political conditions under which women have entered a male-dominated industry and discusses women’s strategies and efforts to promote change while providing evidence on how women’s presence has challenged the industry by provoking critical reactions and introducing new ways to portray women on screen. Using a wide range of different sources (e.g. archival material, laws, contracts, films, biographical materials, and interviews), the book tells the history of the rise of gender equality efforts undertaken by the Swedish Film Institute and investigates women’s possibilities to manage the rights to their work. It offers compelling portraits of pioneering women who have worked in or in relation to the industry and looks at the experiences of women currently working in the film industry

Maaret Koskinen examines Ingmar Bergman’s trilogy on “God’s silence”—Through a Glass Darkly (1960), The Communicants (U.S. title Winter Light, 1963), and The Silence (1963)— in light of his Lutheran background to demonstrate how each of the three films manifests his notion of aesthetic reduction. The trilogy, she argues, documents Bergman’s endeavor to rid his movies of what she calls “sacred clutter” (religious superstructure, film aesthetics, and language), creating a cinematic opposite to the conventions and traditions of most Hollywood religious films. Koskinen takes hold of a strand in which Bergman’s art and religion meet—namely, the question of faith and doubt, which in various ways turns out to deal with religion, aesthetics, and Protestantism on-screen.

Ingmar Bergman’s rich legacy as film director and writer of classics such as The Seventh Seal, Scenes From a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander, has attracted scholars not only in film studies but also of literature, theater, gender, philosophy, religion, sociology, musicology, and more. Less known, however, is Bergman from the perspective of production studies, including all the choices, practices and routines involved in what goes on behind the scenes. For instance, what about Bergman’s collaborations and conflicts with film producers? What about his work with musicians at the opera, technicians in the television studio, and actors on the film set. What about Bergman and metoo? In order to throw light on these issues, art practitioners such as film directors Ang Lee and Margarethe von Trotta, film and opera director Atom Egoyan, and film producer and screenwriter James Schamus, are brought together withacademics such as philosopher and film scholar Paisley Livingston, musicologist Alexis Luko, and playwright and performance studies scholar Allan Havis, to discuss Bergman’s work from their unique perspectives. In addition, this book provides, for the first time, in-depth interviews with Bergman’s longtime collaborators Katinka Faragó and Måns Reuterswärd, who both have first-hand experience of working intimately as producers in film and television with Bergman, covering more than five decades. In an open exchange between individual and institutional perspectives, this book aims at bridging the often-rigid boundaries between theoreticians and practitioners, in turn pointing Bergman studies in new directions.  

The editorial presents the impetus behind this Special Issue, ‘The Politics of Gendered Work and Representation in the Nordic Screen Industries’, and describes its connection to production studies, in particular feminist production studies. Outlining the last two decades’ growing interest in investigating the interrelated issues of gender, equality, working conditions and on-screen representations of women, the editorial notes that this kind of research is being conducted both in the humanistic disciples and the social sciences. In conclusion, the seven contributions to the Special Issue are introduced. All of them help shed light on various aspects of the Nordic film industries in relation to gender.

The Swedish film Orca (2020) was both conceived and produced during COVID-19. As such, it is also about the pandemic and its own becoming. Making use of the proliferation of current screen cultures, including the split screen, writer and director Josephine Bornebusch invigorates old-fashioned ensemble acting while also putting current mediality on display. 

Nora Ephron famously complained that the prevalence of Stockholm street names in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy only created confusion: “Who cared, but there it was, in black-and-white, taking up space.” When the first post-Larsson sequel The Girl in the Spider’s Web was released in 2015, it became apparent that author Lagercrantz had listened to Ephron’s criticism, as the book is saturated with cultural codes pandering to global audiences. This article will draw upon adaptation studies as well as ‘invisibility studies,’ including surveillance technologies—the overarching theme of Lagercrantz’ book. But invisibility also concerns adaptations, as here the source text is only implicitly present, and also as a not yet visible (finished) film is traceable in the novel’s prose.