“Set in the time of the Black Death, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal centers on a pensive knight, Antonius Block, who returns to Sweden after fighting in the Crusades. Death comes to claim him, but Block forestalls his demise by challenging Death to a game of chess – Block wishes to find answers to some of life’s big questions and perform at least one meaningful deed before he dies” (Barrett).
This Thursday, November 21, at 7 PM, the Miami University Art Museum will be hosting a screening of The Seventh Seal, directed by Ingmar Bergman. The screening will feature an introduction to the film by Lexi Jamieson Marsh, producer and visiting assistant professor of media and culture at Miami University. Marsh is the founder of the independent production company On Your Feet Entertainment and the director of The Bearded Lady Project short and feature-length documentary films.
The Seventh Seal is viewed as a classic of world cinema. “Although films had been traveling overseas since the silent era, the widespread success of The Seventh Seal, especially in America, helped usher in a new period of international exposure for arthouse cinema. The film proved that cinema could be a serious means of philosophical expression and, what’s more, that such expression could be popular with audiences. Foreign films became a viable enterprise in America and, in 1957, the Academy even introduced an Oscar for best foreign language film (though The Seventh Seal wasn’t nominated). Bergman’s film has since become a staple of arthouse cinema and been admired by directors as diverse as Woody Allen, Eric Rohmer, Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Verhoeven and Krzysztof Zanussi” (Barrett).
This screening of The Seventh Seal has been chosen to compliment the Art Museum’s current exhibition “Life Cycles: Death.” Items used in the final passage of a person’s life tell so much about the individual who is mourned, celebrated and commemorated. “Life Cycles: Death” looks at objects from many world cultures through the organized structure of Ritual and Iconography, Grieving and Mourning, and Representation.
Citations:
Barrett, Alex. (2017). Seven reasons to celebrate The Seventh Seal – Ingmar Bergman’s medieval masterpiece turns 60. Retrieved from https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/seven-reasons-seventh-seal-ingmar-bergman