Ingmar Bergman Out of Focus

Director Ingmar Bergman occupies a central place in the history of modern cinema. Credited with igniting a cinematic revolution, his ability to produce work which resonated with audiences globally has brought scholarly attention to the impact of Bergman’s Swedish background on his oeuvre. Ingmar Bergman Out of Focus revises this question of Bergman’s “familiarity” to produce a more expansive understanding of Bergman’s cultural heritage. Considering the impact of Bergman’s films on film festival organizers, critics, academics, and audiences all over the world, this volume illuminates how Bergman’s film aesthetics simultaneously shaped modern culture and were themselves reshaped by the debates and concerns that preoccupied his viewers.

Jono Van Belle is an Assistant Professor in Media and Communications Studies at Örebro University in Sweden. She gained her doctorate in Communication and Cinema Studies jointly at Ghent University and Stockholm University in 2019. Focusing especially on Ingmar Bergman, cinema memory, audience reception, gender studies, and media policy, she has worked on the reception of Ingmar Bergman in Sweden and Belgium and, together with Åsa Jernudd, on cinemagoing in Sweden during the 1950s and 1960s.