Museum dedicates event to couple

ISTANBUL

Photographs featuring the professional and personal life of Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann and Swedish director Ingmar Bergman will be on display at TÜRVAK Cinema-Theater Museum.

Istanbul’s TURVAK Cinema-Theater Museum opens today a photography exhibition, dedicated to the world-famous couple of Scandinavian cinema, Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. 

The exhibition, organized by the Norwegian Embassy in Turkey, in collaboration with the Norwegian Film Institute and TURVAK - Türker İnanoğlu Foundation, consists of 35 photographs illuminating the personal and professional relationship of Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann and Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Including film stills, behind-the-scenes images and special portraits, the exhibition will later meet with audiences in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

The film stills, which show Liv Ullmann with her cast mates Bibi Andersson, Max von Sydow, Per Oscarsson, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson and Ingrid Bergman, are exhibited together with special photographs witnessing the intense love affair of Liv and Ingmar. Close-up portraits of the legendary actress Liv Ullmann, who played enigmatic and complex female characters throughout her career, reflect the characteristics of Bergman’s cinema. 

The film program within the scope of the exhibition includes two documentaries and six movies to be screened in TURVAK Museum Movie Theater, shown with Turkish subtitles for the first time. 

Screenings start today with Indian director Dheeraj Akolkar’s documentary, “Liv & Ingmar,” which brings their 42-year relationship to the movie screen. In addition to Liv Ullmann’s first films in which she acted as leading actress, the program also includes the feature films that she directed and focuses on the second chapter in Ullmann and Bergman’s collaboration.

Film screenings are open to the public with free admission. 

Ibsen’s extraordinary women 

The launch of a book titled “Ibsen’s Extraordinary Women” by Bahar Akpınar, will also take place in TURVAK Cinema-Theater Museum within the scope of the exhibition “Liv Ullmann & Ingmar Bergman.” 
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is one of the founders of Modernism in theater.
Akpınar’s book is the first study which covers all Ibsen’s plays translated into Turkish with detailed dramaturgical analysis and background stories. Beyond this, it focuses on Ibsen’s extraordinary female characters in his plays and examines them by using Feminist Methodology. Liv Ullmann is one of the actresses who performed Ibsen’s extraordinary characters on stage and on screen. 

“Liv Ullmann & Ingmar Bergman” photography exhibition is open to visit at the TURVAK Exhibition Hall located on the second floor of the museum between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day except Mondays. 

Ullmann and Bergman 

Born in 1938 in Tokyo, Ullmann spent most of her childhood in Trondheim, Norway. After acquiring acting training in London, she made her stage debut in 1957 in a Norwegian production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Rogaland Theater. 

The man who changed Ullmann’s career as an actress, in her own words “changed her life,” was Bergman. Norwegian actress Ullmann and Swedish director Bergman met in 1964, in Stockholm. Having a five-year love affair and a daughter (Linn Ullmann), the couple carried on their friendship and collaboration until Ingmar Bergman’s death in 2007 and made 12 films together which provided Scandinavian cinema with a privileged place in the universal film history and also influenced the further developments in independent cinema in Nordic countries.

Their first collaboration “Persona” (1966) made Ullmann a world-famous actress. The film was shot on the Faroe Island of Sweden, the place closely associated with Bergman and where the couple lived together. Following “Persona,” Ullmann played leading roles in Bergman’s “Shame” (1968), “Hour of the Wolf” (1968), “The Passion of Anna” (1969), “Cries and Whispers” (1973), “Scenes from a Marriage” (1973), “Face to Face” (1976), “The Serpent’s Egg” (1977) and “Autumn Sonata” (1978).

Shortly after becoming a world-renowned stage actress as Nora in the 1975 Broadway production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” Ullmann published her autobiography, Changing, in 1977. In 1992, she made her feature-film directing debut with Sofie. After her second film Kristin Lavransdatter (1995), Liv Ullmann directed Private Confessions (1996) and Faithless (2000) based on Ingmar Bergman’s scripts. In his lifetime, contributing to cinema with over 50 films as director and scriptwriter and directing plays by Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg on stage, Ingmar Bergman collaborated with Liv Ullmann again, in his last work, Saraband (2003).

In 2012, Indian director Dheeraj Akolkar’s documentary, “Liv & Ingmar,” brought their 42-year legendary relationship to the movie screen. 

The event is organized with the support of Det Norske Veritas and Jotun.