Vilgot Sjöman
Birthday: 1924-12-02 Place of Birth: Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden
Synopsis
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.
Acting
Shame
In the midst of a civil war, former violinists Jan and Eva Rosenberg, who have a tempestuous marriage, run 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.
I Am Curious (Blue)
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 (Yellow)
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.
