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Vilgot Sjöman

Vilgot Sjöman

Directing

Biography

David Harald Vilgot Sjöman was a Swedish writer and film director. His films deal with controversial issues of social class, morality, and sexual taboos, combining the emotionally-tortured characters of Ingmar Bergman with the avant garde style of the French New Wave. He is best known as the director of the films 491 (1964), I Am Curious (Yellow) (in Swedish, "Jag är nyfiken - gul") (1967), and I Am Curious (Blue) ("Jag är nyfiken - blå") (1968), which stretched the boundaries of acceptability of what could then be shown on film, deliberately treating their subjects in a provocative and explicit manner.

Known For

Shame
7.5

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

Shame

1968
Hur ska det gå för Pettersson?
9.0

Rulle has a secret child out of wedlock in Gotland. When she suddenly turns up in Stockholm he doesn't want to explain it to his wife so he sells the fatherhood to his neighbour.

Hur ska det gå för Pettersson?

1984
Defiance
7.0

A teacher is so hard on his students that he faces a warning by the school principal. In order to at least improve the strained relationship with his own son, he turns to a priest for advice.

Defiance

1952
My Sister My Love
6.5

Sweden, 1782. Jacob, a young noble, somewhat wild and vehement, returns from his studies in France. After his absence, he returns home happy, but is even happier of meeting his beloved sister Charlotte again. However, she has been promised to the Baron Alsmeden, a man of great influence at court, and this fact will awake a feeling like jealousy in Jacob.

My Sister My Love

1966
Tabu
5.0

Solidarity with the border people. Equal rights for the sexual deviants. Kristoffer Lohman is a young solicitor who collects stories and knowledge of different perversions. This has affected and changed his own sexual life. Sara, a young well-behaved and adorned woman, becomes interested in Kristoffer's activity.

Tabu

1977
Palme
7.6

Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was openly shot to death on a February evening 1986 on the streets of Stockholm. In one night, the country of Sweden was transfigured. “Palme” is about his life, his time, and about the Sweden he had created. About a man who altered history.

Palme

2012
Malacca
8.0

A young man and woman are touring around Asia with rucksacks on their backs. They meet a stranger, who turns out to be more dangerous than he seems.

Malacca

1987
I Am Curious (Yellow)
5.7

Lena, aged twenty, wants to know all she can about life and reality. She collects information on everyone and everything, storing her findings in an enormous archive. She experiments with relationships, political activism, and meditation. Meanwhile, the actors, director and crew are shown in a humorous parallel plot about the making of the film and their reactions to the story and each other. Nudity, explicit sex, and controversial politics kept this film from being shown in the US while its seizure by Customs was appealed.

I Am Curious (Yellow)

1967
Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie
N/A

The year is 1961 and Ingmar Bergman is making a movie. While planted on the scene as apprentice to Bergman, Vilgot Sjöman (director, I Am Curious–Yellow, 1967), suggests to Swedish Television that they take the opportunity to record with the acclaimed director. In August, Sjöman and the television crew begin to capture what would become a comprehensive five-part documentary on the making of Winter Light, offering views of script development, set construction and lighting, rehearsals and editing, as well as intimate conversations with Bergman and members of his cast and crew. Footage from the film’s Swedish premiere delivers immediate audience reactions and the critics’ reviews the following day.

Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie

1963
I Am Curious (Blue)
5.5

The same movie with the same characters, cast and crew as I am Curious (Yellow), but with some different scenes and a different political slant. The political focus in Blue is personal relationships, religion, prisons and sex. Blue omits much of the class consciousness and non-violence interviews of the first version. Yellow and Blue are the colors of the Swedish flag.

I Am Curious (Blue)

1968
Filmmakers vs. Tycoons
6.8

How the cinema industry does not respect the author's work as it was conceived, how manipulates the motion pictures in order to make them easier to watch by an undemanding audience or even how mutilates them to adapt the original formats and runtimes to the restrictive frame of the television screen and the abusive requirements of advertising. (Followed by “Filmmakers in Action.”)

Filmmakers vs. Tycoons

2005
You're Lying!
6.0

About an alcohol-damaged young man, his life in and out of prison, his friend the art teacher and his difficulties reintegrating into society.

You're Lying!

1969
491
5.9

A study in forgiveness as oppression and goodness as provocation. Six youth criminals are chosen to participate in a social experiment where they are assigned to live together in a rundown apartment in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden. The six boys are being supervised by two forgiving and uneasy social workers. Their need to continue to commit petty crimes escalates out of boredom with the situation. One night they run into a young girl in trouble.

491

1964
Siska
6.3

A young woman struggles with life, love and career. She is courted by a young man but is unwilling to enter into a relationship if it means limiting her freedom.

Siska

1962
The Dress
9.0

Edit is pleased that her mother agrees to let her buy a dress she loves, but which in fact is made for an adult woman.

The Dress

1964
A Handful of Love
4.7

Set against the backdrop of the 1909 general strike, Hjördis is employed as a housemaid in a wealthy Stockholm family.

A Handful of Love

1974
Kristoffers hus
8.0

Kristoffer lives on the verge of poverty, just barely supporting himself on his photographic work and an allowance given him by his ex-wife to support their child. He is staying in his absentee mother's large old house, which she is preparing to sell. When he takes a photograph of a man who died by his own hand, the image fascinates him. He grows obsessed with the dead man's story and pushes his research as far as it will go.

Kristoffers hus

1979
Stimulantia
6.1

Eight vignettes on a variety of topics, including a baby growing up, Charlie Chaplin, Birgit Nilsson, the racing track at Le Mans, erotic cleanliness, French literature, and a black woman in a cupboard in the neighborhood of Farsta near Stockholm.

Stimulantia

1967
No image
8.0

Larry Pedersen, professor of psychology of religion, has just divorced when a student named Elisabeth student must take the exam before him. Later in the evening the same day, she is beaten by her boyfriend and then Pedersen offers her a bed for the night.

Fallgropen

1989
No image
10.0

Swedish filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman takes his old father Wiktor on a drive to his childhood environment.

Traveling with Father

1969