Cranes, Venice and a magic lantern

'Film-making' is taken from the introduction that Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish film director, wrote to his book 'Four Screenplays'. He made stark, brooding films such as 'The Seventh Seal' and 'Wild Strawberries'.

He begins with a memory. While filming 'The Virgin Spring' in a cold forest, the whole crew suddenly dropped everything to watch a flock of cranes circling overhead. For him, that moment was Swedish film-making: old equipment, little money, and a shared sense of wonder.

Then he goes back to his childhood. In his grandmother's flat in Uppsala, he used to sit and 'listen' to the sunshine and the church bells. At five, he looked at a picture of Venice, and it seemed to come alive: the water moved, and he could hear the sounds.

He grew up in a vicarage (a clergyman's house), and met life, death and the devil early. He had a magic lantern, and imagined that the wolf in 'Red Riding Hood' was the devil.

At ten, he got a rattling film projector, with a tiny brown film of a girl waking up in a meadow, stretching and dancing. He showed it every night until it broke. A film-maker begins as a child who sees and listens.