BERGMANIA

Stills from the Movie in my mind

Bergmania
is an art exhibit based on stills from Ingmar Bergman's movies.
It is dear to my heart as I'm not only Swedish and share a lot of what Ingmar deals with in his movies. But in a fantastic way I have been close to not only Bergman himself but to many of his family members and the actors and actresses he worked with all through his career.
BERGMANIA is a made up word combining three words
The obvious word is naturally Bergman and within it like an Anagram is “Germania” where Ingmar spent time in his youth and where he was seduced by an N.S.D.A.P. vision of the world , after seeing and hearing Hitler at a rally in Weimar in 1934. * A vision that later haunted him after seing the doors open to the Concentration camps and with his bad concience about this time in his life came back in movies like The Serpent's Egg.
The last part of the word containes the word , “Mania “ and it is something I have in common with Ingmar.
*The exhibit combines the darkness and passion, the struggle with beliefs in God, Christ and Love, the deep fascination with Death and the abusive fasination and love for women and the trubblesome complexity of his relationship with his father who was a priest. It happen to be in the same church I had next to my home.
I had the unique opportunity to work with Mr Bergman at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in the 1970s. I have also been close to several of the actors who have dedicated most of their active lives to Bergman. There is a photograph by Beata Bergström the still photograpger at the theatre where Ingmar is giving me stage directions
with his arm around my sholders .
I acted in a Strindberg short play opposite Bibi Anderson at my Strindberg Manifest art exhibit at the culture house in Stockholm in 1982. And I had several of Bergmans actors as my teachers like Ulf Johansson, when I myself was a young actor. I have spent time with Harriet Anderson who I admire very much as she is not only a powerful actress but a beautiful woman. Gunnar Björnstrand as his daughter Veronica was in my acting class as well as Anita Molander who was also at one time the assistant to Ingmar and whose father Jan Molander worked with Bergman.
Anita once gave me the dark red Theatre chair Bergman always sat in while directing,
and it's sad that someone stole it in my storage. I had Ingrid Thulin as my next door neighbour when I lived with my mother and father in Danderyd in our family’s villa. And I lived in the same o house in the Old time as one of Bergmans actors Lars Ekborg and his son Dan Ekborg was my classmate in acting school , and we have acted alongside oneanother in several productions.
My mother Kjerstin Dellert also worked with Ingmar in the opera Mother Goose at the Royal Opera in Stockholm.
At the Dramatic theatre I also worked in stage productions with Bergman actors like Erns Hugo Järegård, Erik Hell, Getrud Fridh, and Börje Ahlstedt with who I have shared the stage with several times at the Confidencen Theatre where my mother was director. And I have been in the same TV program with Max Von Sydov.
And I have had the great luck to meet and dine privately with Ingrid Bergman who played in Ingmars movie Autumn Sonata. She wrote an introduction letter for me to enter Lee Strassbergs Acting School in LA.
When Bergman was given the Legion of Honour, premier order of the French republic, I was there at the Odeon Theatre in Paris with standing ovations and at the dinner afterworth. A memory for life.
Finally, while I was the director of the cult musical The Rocky Horror Show at the China Theatre in 1983 Ingmars son Daniel was working with me in that production. I also have had some of his children and grandchildren as my friends through the years, like Caroline and Fredric von Rosen .
This art exhibit is paying homage to Ingmar Bergman as one of the most influential directors in the history of cinematography and the stills are often taken from the master cameraman Sven Nykvist, without permission.
I have also exhibited a Portrait of Ingmar I did in 1982 that was shown in New York later given to Ingmar and he gave it to hang in the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm .
Thomas Dellert