Marie Nyreröd's acclaimed documentary plays for a two-week run (6-19 December 2006) in New York City. Check out the Film Forum's website, as well as reviews in The New York Times and The Villager.

Maj-Britt Nilsson, who starred in several of Bergman's early films, most notably as a world-weary prima ballerina who recalls a youthful love affair in Summer Interlude, died 19 December 2006 at a hospital in Cannes, France. No cause of death was reported. Read the Washington Post obituary.

The Swedish Nationalmuseum is showing some sixty portrait photographs by Georg Oddner, the Swedish documentary and fashion photographer who was born in 1923. There are incisive portraits of Ingmar Bergman and other artists, authors and stars of stage and screen. (30 November 2006-9 April 2007)

The first Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award will be presented next year during the 30th edition of the Göteborg International Film Festival that runs from January 26 to February 5. The award is "a way of encouraging young film makers to deal with the really important issues, in a time where the film industry more and more has taken on the shape and form of a butchery and fornication business," Bergman said in a statement. Read the DPA report. (14 November 2006)

Sven Nykvist, Bergman's longtime cinematographer, passed away at age 83 on 20 September 2006, after a long illness. Nykvist died at a nursing home where he was being treated for aphasia, a form of dementia, said his son, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist. Nykvist's sense of lighting and camera work made him a favourite of Bergman's after their first collaboration on the 1953 film Sawdust and Tinsel, which began a partnership that spanned three decades. Read the AP report and tributes in The Guardian and The Los Angeles Times.

"The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded for the written word, but why shouldn't it go to a filmmaker? We modestly suggest that the sixty-plus-year career of Sweden's master, Ingmar Bergman, dwarfs the achievements of most recent Nobel winners.... Bergman's camera has held its rigorous gaze over the minutiae of human behaviour, resulting in a series of devastating masterpieces.... In this discussion, Robert Horton considers this mighty career, and serves notice to the Nobel voters." Attend this Magic Lantern event at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle on 10 September 2006 at 2:00 p.m.

A comprehensive Bergman retrospective–covering his earliest films to Marie Nyreröd's Bergman Trilogy–is being held at the Münchner Stadtmuseum from 7 September 2006 to 8 February 2007. The programme guide is available here.

"The Bergman Week (27 June-2 July 2006) is a six day celebration of Ingmar Bergman's art, with films, guests, seminars and tours to filming locations on Fårö. Bergman's abundant work is a constant source of inspiration to filmmakers all around the world and his themes are highly relevant in our century as well! The goal of Bergman Week is to view his films in a new light and highlight the timeless themes reappearing throughout the body of his work."

Swedish director and screenwriter Vilgot Sjöman, best known for socially critical and sexually explicit films such as I Am Curious–Yellow (1967), has died in Stockholm on 9 April 2006 of complications from a brain hemorrhage. He was 81. Credited as an assistant director on Bergman's Winter Light (1963), Sjöman also authored a book (L-136: A Diary with Ingmar Bergman) and a comprehensive five-part documentary (Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie) on the making of the film.

Swedish director Marie Nyreröd's three one-hour films comprising The Bergman Trilogy: Bergman and the Cinema; Bergman and the Theatre; Bergman and Fårö Island is presented in its North American premiere at the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montréal from 9-19 March 2006. A co-production of Sveriges Television and Svensk Filmindustri, The Bergman Trilogy was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005.

Harry Schein, founder of the Swedish Film Institute and its first managing director from 1963 to 1978, has died at age 81 on 11 February 2006. Schein is best known for crafting the 1963 Film Reform Act, which financed Swedish film production through a 10 percent levy on gross box office receipts. A long-time associate of Bergman's, Schein was married to Ingrid Thulin from 1956 to 1989.

Norwegian novelist Linn Ullmann has admitted her novels are partially a way of corresponding with her famous parents, director Ingmar Bergman and actress Liv Ullmann, as she launches her new book Grace. Read the BBC story (10 February 2006).

The projector that Bergman received as a child was found after having been feared stolen, a Bergman Foundation spokeswoman said. It was reported missing 11 January from the Swedish Foreign Ministry, where it was on display as part of an exhibition called "Before Ingmar became Bergman." Ministry officials had feared that the historic projector was stolen, but it was found in a store room at the Swedish Institute. Read the full story (26 January 2006).