Three by Mai Zetterling
8 Episodes
A fearlessly transgressive, long-overlooked pioneer of feminist cinema, Swedish actor turned director Mai Zetterling ruffled the feathers of the patriarchal establishment with a string of bracingly modern, sexually frank, and politically incendiary films focused on female agency and the turbulent state of twentieth-century Europe. Her peerless ability to render subjective psychological states with startling immediacy is on display in LOVING COUPLES, NIGHT GAMES, and THE GIRLS—three provocative, taboo-shattering works from the 1960s featuring some of Swedish cinema’s most iconic stars. With their audacious narrative structures that fuse reality and fantasy, their elaborate use of metaphor and symbolism, and their willingness to delve into the most fraught realms of human experience, these movies are models of adventurous, passionately engaged filmmaking.
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1:58:33Episode 1Loving Couples
Episode 1
Directed by Mai Zetterling • 1964 • Sweden
Starring Harriet Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Gio PetréThe title of Mai Zetterling’s boldly iconoclastic debut feature—adapted from a cycle of seven novels by the provocative feminist writer Agnes von Krusenstjerna—drips with irony. In 1915, three pregn...
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1:45:51Episode 2Night Games
Episode 2
Directed by Mai Zetterling • 1966 • Sweden
Starring Ingrid Thulin, Keve Hjelm, Jörgen LindströmOutrageous and explosively controversial (the Venice Film Festival refused to screen it publicly, while John Waters has called it his favorite film), Mai Zetterling’s second feature is a blazing psych...
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The Girls
Episode 3
Directed by Mai Zetterling • 1968 • Sweden
Starring Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Gunnel LindblomMai Zetterling’s cinema reached new heights of exuberant experimentation and fierce political engagement with this pointed and playful touchstone of 1960s feminist cinema. As they tour Sweden i...
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21:39Episode 4Alicia Malone on Mai Zetterling
Episode 4
In this interview, recorded in New York in 2022, Alicia Malone, author of “The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women,” discusses Mai Zetterling’s journey from actor to director, her return to her home country of Sweden to direct films in the 1960s, and why her work isn't better known today.
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46:33Episode 5Maybe I Really Am A Sorceress
Episode 5
Broadcast on German television in 1989, this documentary by Katja Raganelli is an intimate portrait of director Mai Zetterling that includes interviews with Zetterling, David Hughes (Zetterling’s ex-husband and the cowriter of LOVING COUPLES, NIGHT GAMES, and THE GIRLS), and actors Harriet Anders...
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1:17:02Episode 6Lines from the Heart
Episode 6
Filmed at Mai Zetterling’s home in France after the director’s death, this seventy-five-minute 1996 documentary reunites THE GIRLS actors Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnel Lindblom, who look back on their illustrious careers and discuss their craft, working with Zetterling, motherhood...
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10:14Episode 7Mai Zetterling on LOVING COUPLES
Episode 7
In this interview, recorded in 1984, Mai Zetterling recalls why she became a director; the making of her first feature film, LOVING COUPLES; and how the response to her fourth, THE GIRLS, impacted her career.
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13:08Episode 8Making of NIGHT GAMES
Episode 8
The following on-set footage and interviews were shot for Swedish television during the making of NIGHT GAMES and at its controversial premiere at the 1966 Venice Film Festival.
