A HOUSE FOR PERSONA
Location: Fårö, Sweden
Typology: Theoretical Home
Date: Summer 2019
Software Used: AfterEffects, AutoCad, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, PremierPro, Rhino, Vray
Click the rendering to view “A House for Persona” book
Shot at Ingmar Bergman’s home in Hammars, Persona is possibly Bergman’s most abstract film. Known as poetry through images, we follow Liv Ullmann as Elisabet, and Bibi Andersson as Nurse Alma fall into a modernist despair. A home for Persona focuses on isolation, a place separate from society and allows its users to explore their own persona through a movement of spaces. Like the movie, the occupants are constantly moving inside and out, blurring the interior with the exterior. Bergman refuses to interpret the film. He suggests that everyone will have a very different interpretation, keeping it ambiguous and dynamic. Throughout the film, he reminds us that the drama of Persona is still a film. Keeping the duality between fact and fiction. Fiction being the story and fact that it is a film. We can see this in the beginning of the film where the story flashes to burning of celluloid filament, with spools and film reels running, and at the end of the film when we see the production set, featuring cameras and their operators. This tension between fact and fiction is a common theme throughout the film and creates a duality that is expressed throughout the house of Persona.
“My dear, I could live like this forever. Silent, living a secluded life, reducing my needs, feeling my battered soul finally starting to smooth itself out.”
