Abstract

Ingmar Bergman stands as one of the most influential filmmakers of the twentieth century, known for his stark visual language, his unflinching attention to human vulnerability, and his explorations of faith, desire, loneliness and the limits of communication. His films often turn inward, confronting the viewer with what cannot be spoken and what remains unresolved in the human condition.

This event offers an accessible psychoanalytic exploration of one of Bergman’s most enigmatic works, The Silence(1963). Instead of approaching the film through a predetermined theoretical framework, Peter Jansson reverses the usual method: he shows how Bergman’s film itself gives shape to ‘one theory’ – Lacan’s notion of the Real. The aim is not to apply psychoanalysis to cinema, but to reveal how The Silence thinks, how it exposes what escapes language, and how it confronts viewers with the limits of symbolisation.

The event is designed for a broad audience, including those unfamiliar with The Silence. To make the discussion accessible, Peter will screen selected scenes during the session. These excerpts will serve as visual entry points into the film’s world of strained intimacy, wordless tension and emotional isolation, allowing participants to follow the argument directly through Bergman’s images.

What can The Silence teach us about the world and life? What picture of society and culture emerges when the film is viewed psychoanalytically? What fantasies, desires, doubts and forms of loneliness inhabit its narrative and its depictions of bodies, relationships and spiritual disorientation? Peter’s reading evokes the intangible and the void by showing how Bergman confers human traits on the Abyss.

In this way, Peter situates his exploration within the field Lacan calls the Real – that which resists symbolisation, remains beyond speech, and has not yet taken form in the imaginary. It concerns the space beyond silence, the hole in the heart of the symbolic order, the void concealed by the visible, whose gaze, beyond meaning, in the disorder of being, the subject cannot bear. Through his guidance and the selected film excerpts, the audience is invited into a cinematic encounter with this inexpressible dimension.

In corporation with: UNCONSCIOUS BERLIN

Speakers

Peter Jansson (Gothenburg)

Kosten

10€ or reduced

Registration

You can register via mail to Dr. Leon S. Brenner: leon.s.brenner@gmail.com