NYS Writers Institute launches Ingmar Bergman Centennial Film Series with THE SEVENTH SEAL on Friday, Oct. 5

First of three screenings of the renowned Swedish director's works at the University at Albany

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THE SEVENTH SEAL movie still

ALBANY, NY (10/01/2018) (readMedia)-- EVENT DETAILS:

The NYS Writers Institute launches its Ingmar Bergman Centennial Film Series with a screening of THE SEVENTH SEAL at 7:30 p.m. Friday, October 5, at Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Albany, on the University at Albany's Downtown Campus. The series, which mark the 100th anniversary of Bergman's birth, continues with CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972) on Friday, November 9, and THE BEST OF INTENTIONS (1991) on Friday, November 30, both in Page Hall. The screenings are free and open to the public. For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at nyswritersinstitute.org.

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The NYS Writers Institute launches its Ingmar Bergman Centennial Film Series with a screening of THE SEVENTH SEAL at 7:30 p.m. Friday, October 5, at Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Albany, on the University at Albany's Downtown Campus

The series, which mark the 100th anniversary of Bergman's birth, continues with CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972) on Friday, November 9, and THE BEST OF INTENTIONS (1991) on Friday, November 30, both in Page Hall. These screenings are free and open to the public.

Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Max von Sydow, THE SEVENTH SEAL depicts a medieval knight searching for answers about the meaning of life while playing a game of chess with Death during the Black Plague. Bergman's 1957 classic is credited with launching a new cinematic culture of philosophical inquiry and serious artistic expression.

Bergman (1918-2007), a giant of world cinema, is often compared with other founding figures of modern art, including Pablo Picasso and Samuel Beckett. His films frequently explore mortality, sickness, insanity, sin, betrayal, grief and faith.

The film title is a reference to a passage from the Book of Revelation: "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour," and the scenes and symbolism in the THE SEVENTH SEAL have become both iconic and parodied, as in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975) and Woody Allen's LOVE AND DEATH (1975).

THE SEVENTH SEAL holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and in James Monaco's book, How To Read a Film: Movies Media and Beyond, Bergman's work is praised as "immediately apprehensible to people trained in literary culture who were just beginning to discover the 'art' of film ... it quickly became a staple of high school and college literature courses... Unlike Hollywood 'movies,' THE SEVENTH SEAL clearly was aware of elite artistic culture and thus was readily appreciated by intellectual audiences."

View the movie trailer at nyswritersinstitute.org. (Note: The movie trailer contains spoilers.) For more information, contact the NYS Writers Institute at 518-442-5620.

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