Ingmar Bergman 1918 - 2007

Leslie Cheung over 17 years ago

Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, died on Monday (July 30), aged 89. The director's daughter Eva Bergman announced the news to news agency TT yesterday. She said he died at his home on the small island of Fårö in the Baltic Sea.

Some representative works of the director are the intense classics like Cries & Whispers, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.

Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said, "It's an unbelievable loss for Sweden, but even more so internationally."

Ingmar Bergman had five marriages and eight children, and his work often explored the tensions between married couples. "My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires," the director once said. "Sometimes they appear from the past, sometimes they grow up from my present life."

In a 70th birthday tribute in 1988, Woody Allen said Ingmar Bergman was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera."

The date of the funeral has not yet been set, but it was reported that it will be attended by a close group of friends and family.