ABSTRACT
In “Island Earth: Bergman, Brahe, and the Many Suns,” New York scholar and filmmaker Patrick Scanlon places our fair filmmaker alongside the 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe. Although separated by several centuries and the terms of their respective disciplines, Bergman and Brahe are nonetheless a suitable pair. Beyond their island life – as both figures cultivated their distinct styles and advanced their fields off the coast of Sweden – they share a unique devotion to light in its solar, lunar, celestial, and mechanical forms. In this sense, light does not constitute an object or aim of their art and inquiry, some utility that allows the work to proceed; its status is more methodological in nature, if not initiatic, and as such generates innovations that exceeded the bounds of the personal. Fortunately, Bergman and Brahe are rather explicit about their first encounters with this special dispensation of light, and provide a somewhat continuous commentary on its effects, which always show something of the originary scene. Island Earth thus privileges the autobiographical, and while conscious of the great depth of technical knowledge produced by Bergman and Brahe, its focus is those more ordinary and phenomenological experiences, however mystical their conceits. From Brahe’s camera obscura to Bergman’s magic lantern, there are many ways to illumine the many suns.
