Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish film and theatre director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time, his films have been described as "profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul". Some of his most acclaimed works include The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966) and Fanny and Alexander (1982), which were included in the 2012 edition of Sight & Sound's Greatest Films of All Time. He was also ranked No. 8 on the magazine's 2002 "Greatest Directors of All Time" list.
Stockholm is the capital and most populous city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately 1 million people live in the municipality, with 2.1 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropolitan area. The city stretches across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea. Outside the city to the east, and along the coast, is the island chain of the Stockholm archipelago. The area has been settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC, and was founded as a city in 1252 by Swedish statesman Birger Jarl. The city serves as the county seat of Stockholm County.
Apart from being a large city with an active cultural life, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, houses many national cultural institutions. There are two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Stockholm County area: the Royal Palace Drottningholm and the Skogskyrkogården.
The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish historical fantasy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set in Sweden during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death, who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play Wood Painting. The title refers to a passage from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour." Here, the motif of silence refers to the "silence of God," which is a major theme of the film.
Sveriges Television AB, shortened to SVT, is the Swedish national public television broadcaster, funded by a public service tax on personal income set by the Riksdag. Prior to 2019, SVT was funded by a television licence fee payable by all owners of television sets. The Swedish public broadcasting system is largely modelled after the system used in the United Kingdom, and Sveriges Television shares many traits with its British counterpart, the BBC.
The government agencies in Sweden are state-controlled organizations that act independently to carry out the policies of the Government of Sweden. The ministries are relatively small and merely policy-making organizations, allowed to monitor the agencies and preparing decision and policy papers for the government as a collective body to decide upon.
The Drottningholm Palace Theatre is an opera house located at Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm, Sweden. It is one of the few 18th century theatres in Europe that is still used as a theatre with its original stage machinery.
The Swedish History Museum is a museum located in Stockholm, Sweden, that covers Swedish archaeology and cultural history from the Mesolithic period to present day. Founded in 1866, it operates as a government agency and is tasked with preserving Swedish historical items as well as making knowledge about history available to the public.
The Nordic Museum is a museum located on Djurgården, an island in central Stockholm, Sweden, dedicated to the cultural history and ethnography of Sweden from the early modern period to the contemporary period. The museum was founded in the late 19th century by Artur Hazelius, who also founded the open-air museum Skansen. It was, for a long time, part of the museum, until the institutions were made independent of each other in 1963.
The Magic Flute is Ingmar Bergman's 1975 film version of Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte. It was intended as a television production and was first shown on Swedish television on 1 January 1975, but was followed by a theatrical release later that year. The work is widely viewed as one of the most successful films of an opera ever made, and as an unusual item among the director's works. The film won BAFTA TV Award for Best Foreign Television Programme in 1976 and was nominated for Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.
The Ministry of Culture is a ministry within the government of Sweden responsible for culture policy. The ministry is headed by the Minister for Culture, currently Parisa Liljestrand (m).
The Swedish National Heritage Board is a Swedish government agency responsible for World Heritage Sites and other national heritage monuments and historical environments. It is governed by the Ministry of Culture.
Television began in Sweden in 1954 with test transmissions, prior to the opening of the first station, Radiotjänst, two years later. A second channel was launched in 1969. Commercial television arrived in the 1980s through cable television and in 1992, the country's first terrestrial commercial channel was launched.
Karin Erskine is a Swedish costume designer. She was co-nominated with Henny Noremark for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for their work in Ingmar Bergman's film The Magic Flute (1975).
Hanna Tove Dahlberg is a Swedish mezzo-soprano opera singer, active on the international opera scene. In 2005 Dahlberg was one of a group of world-class musicians who were permitted to perform inside a building at Auschwitz for the first time ever during the filming of the International Emmy Award winning TV documentary Holocaust: A Music Memorial Film.
Stockholm University Library is the research library of the University of Stockholm with one main library and eight unit libraries. Stockholm University Library is one of Sweden's largest research libraries, providing extensive access to e-books and other digital material as well as interlibrary loans. The focus groups are students, researchers and teachers. They have access to the collections of printed as well as online literature, tools for e-publishing of essays, study places, research results and education in information, scientific communication and how to work with references. Stockholm University Library is also a public library with over 1.4 million visitors in 2012.
Eskil Hemberg (1938–2004) was a Swedish composer and conductor. He held positions including CEO and artistic director of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, as well as president of the International Federation for Choral Music.
United Kingdom–Sweden relations are relations between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Kingdom of Sweden. Both countries are members of the Council of Europe.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Stockholm:
Ludmila Christeseva, is a Swedish visual artist with Belarusian roots. She was born in 1978 in Mogilev, Belarus and received a Master's of Arts degree from The Faculty of Artistic Design and Technology at the Vitebsk State Technological University in Belarus in 2001. Christeseva then moved to Sweden and joined the creative team of the Swedish fashion designer Lars Wallin. She also holds degrees from Stockholm University and The University College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack). Her artistic research focuses on gender identity and the questions relating to representation across cultures. She actively participates in various art projects and exhibitions in Sweden and abroad. L. Christeseva runs an exhibition space, Artten, in central Stockholm, which is dedicated to women's empowerment and to the growth of consciousness within the community of art and fashion.