On Life and Work

In November 1997, Jörn Donner, an old friend of Ingmar Bergman, paid a visit to the Swedish filmmaker at his house on his favourite island Farö where he had withdrawn. Donner had produced Bergman’s last feature film “Fanny and Alexander” in 1982 among others and accompanied him throughout his career one way or other. The visit turned into a long conversation on life and work, love and the philosophy behind the oeuvre of the grand filmmaker, life and work being difficult to separate from each other. He does not remember his children’s birthdays but the finishing of a film or the date of an impressive theatre premiere are very fresh memories to him. They talk about inner demons and the joys of writing, the desire for anonymity and the burden of celebrity, the humiliation of exile in Munich, the death of his wife Ingrid van Rosen.