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Persona (1966 film)

Persona is a 1966 Swedish avant-garde psychological drama film written, directed, and produced by Ingmar Bergman and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. The story revolves around a young nurse named Alma (Andersson) and her patient, well-known stage actress Elisabet Vogler (Ullmann), who has suddenly stopped speaking. They move to a cottage, where Alma cares for Elisabet, confides in her, and begins having trouble distinguishing herself from her patient.

Characterized by elements of psychological horror, Persona has been the subject of much critical analysis, interpretation, and debate. The film's exploration of duality, insanity, and personal identity has been interpreted as reflecting the Jungian theory of persona and dealing with issues related to filmmaking, vampirism, homosexuality, motherhood, abortion, and other subjects. The experimental style of its prologue, storytelling, and end has also been noted. The enigmatic film has been called the Mount Everest of cinematic analysis; according to film historian Peter Cowie, "Everything one says about Persona may be contradicted; the opposite will also be true".

Bergman wrote Persona with Ullmann and Andersson in mind for the lead roles and the idea of exploring their identities, and shot the film in Stockholm and Fårö in 1965. In production, the filmmakers experimented with effects, using smoke and a mirror to frame one scene and combining the lead characters' faces in post-production for one shot. Andersson defended a sexually explicit monologue in the screenplay and rewrote portions of it.

When first released, Persona was edited because of its controversial subject matter. It received positive reviews at its initial release with Swedish press outlets coining the word Person(a)kult to describe its enthusiastic admirers. It won Best Film at the 4th Guldbagge Awards, and was Sweden's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The censored content was reinstated in English-language restorations in 2001. Over time, Persona has received widespread critical acclaim, especially for Bergman's direction, screenplay, and narrative, Nykvist's cinematography, and Andersson's and Ullmann's performances. Many critics consider Persona one of the greatest films ever made, Bergman's magnum opus, and a work of art of experimental cinema, and Andersson's and Ullmann's performances two of the best female performances in movie history. Persona is also considered one of the most difficult and complex films. It was ranked fifth in Sight & Sound's 1972 poll and 17th in 2012. It also influenced many directors, including Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Denis Villeneuve.

Plot
A projector begins screening a series of images, including a crucifixion, a spider and the killing of a lamb, and a boy wakes up in a hospital or morgue. He sees a large screen with a blurry image of two women. One of the women may be Alma, a young nurse assigned by a doctor to care for Elisabet Vogler. Elisabet is a stage actress who has suddenly stopped speaking and moving, which the doctors have determined is the result of willpower rather than physical or mental illness. In the hospital, Elisabet is distressed by television images of a man's self-immolation during the Vietnam War. Alma reads her a letter from Elisabet's husband that contains a photo of their son, and the actress tears the photograph up. The doctor speculates that Elisabet may recover better in a cottage by the sea, and sends her there with Alma.

At the cottage, Alma tells Elisabet that no one has ever really listened to her before. She talks about her fiancé, Karl-Henrik, and her first affair. Alma tells a story of how, while she was already in a relationship with Karl-Henrik, she sunbathed in the nude with Katarina, a woman she had just met. Two young boys appeared, and Katarina initiated an orgy. Alma became pregnant, had an abortion, and continues to feel guilty.

Alma drives to town to mail their letters and notices that Elisabet's is not sealed. She reads it. The letter says that Elisabet is "studying" Alma and mentions the nurse's orgy and abortion. Furious, Alma accuses Elisabet of using her for some purpose. In the resulting fight, she threatens to scald Elisabet with boiling water and stops when Elisabet begs her not to. This is the first time Alma is certain the actress has spoken since they met, though she thought Elisabet previously whispered to her when Alma was half-asleep. Alma tells her that she knows Elisabet is a terrible person; when Elisabet runs off, Alma chases her and begs for forgiveness. Later, Elisabet looks at the famous photograph of Jews arrested in the Warsaw Ghetto from the Stroop Report.

One night, Alma hears a man outside calling for Elisabet; it is Elisabet's husband. He calls Alma "Elisabet" and, though the nurse tells him he is mistaken, they have sex. Alma meets with Elisabet to talk about why Elisabet tore up the photo of her son. Alma tells much of Elisabet's story: that she wanted the only thing she did not have, motherhood, and became pregnant. Regretting her decision, Elisabet attempted a failed self-induced abortion and gave birth to a boy whom she despises, but her son craves her love. Alma ends the story in distress, asserting her identity and denying that she is Elisabet. She later coaxes Elisabet to say the word "nothing", and leaves the cottage as a crew films Elisabet and the projector from the prologue stops running.

Cast

 * Bibi Andersson as Alma, the nurse
 * Liv Ullmann as Elisabet Vogler, the actress
 * Margaretha Krook as The Doctor
 * Gunnar Björnstrand as Mr. Vogler
 * Jörgen Lindström as The Boy, Elisabet's son

Themes and interpretations
Persona has been subject to a variety of interpretations. According to Professor Thomas Elsaesser, the film "has been for film critics and scholars what climbing Everest is for mountaineers: the ultimate professional challenge. Besides Citizen Kane, it is probably the most written-about film in the canon". Critic Peter Cowie wrote, "Everything one says about Persona may be contradicted; the opposite will also be true". Academic Frank Gado called Cowie's assessment "patent nonsense", but agreed there was "critical disarray"; editor Lloyd Michaels said that although Cowie exaggerated somewhat, he welcomed the "critical license" to study the film.

Michaels summarized what he calls "the most widely held view" of Persona: that it is "a kind of modernist horror movie". Elisabet's condition, described by a doctor as "the hopeless dream to be", is "the shared condition of both life and film art". Film scholar Marc Gervais has suggested several possible interpretations: "a metaphor of the subconscious or unconscious", "one personality consuming the other", "the fusing of two personalities into one", or "the different sides of the same personality fleetingly merging". Gado suggested that Persona was "an investigation of schizophrenia, a story about lesbian attraction, or a parable about the artist".

Bergman said that although he had an idea of what the story meant, he would not share it because he felt that his audience should draw its own conclusions. He hoped the film would be felt rather than understood.

The "silence of God" is a theme Bergman explored extensively in his previous work. According to author Paul Coates, Persona was the "aftermath" of that exploration. Gervais added that Persona and other Bergman films between 1965 and 1970 were not "God-centred". Gervais also quoted philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as a guide to understanding Persona: "Belief in the absolute immorality of Nature, in lack of purpose, and in meaninglessness, is the affect psychologically necessary once belief in God and an essentially moral order is no longer supportable".

Identity and duality
Analysis has focused on the characters' resemblance, demonstrated in shots of overlapping faces in which one face is visible and part of another is seen behind it, suggesting the possibility that the characters are one, and their duality. Critic John Simon commented, "This duality can be embodied in two persons, as it is here, but it has a distinct relevance to the contradictory aspects of a single person". If they are one person, the questions exist of whether Alma is fantasizing about the actress she admires, Elisabet is examining her psyche, or the boy is trying to understand his mother. Susan Sontag suggested that Persona is a series of variations on the theme of "doubling". According to Sontag, the film's subject is "violence of the spirit". Professor Irving Singer, examining the shot in which Alma and Elisabet's faces are combined, compared its repulsive effect to that of seeing Robert Louis Stevenson's character Mr. Hyde instead of his benign alter ego, Dr. Jekyll. Singer wrote that Bergman expanded on Stevenson's exploration of duality, the "good and evil, light and dark aspects of our nature", depicting it as "oneness" in the shot.

Gado saw Persona as a "double-threaded process of discovery involving motherhood". Elisabet's withdrawal into silence could be her rejection of motherhood, the only role the actress could not slough off. The nurse realizes that she has done what Elisabet tried and failed to do: erase a child from her life by abortion. Psychiatrist Barbara Young viewed the boy in the morgue in the film's prologue as a stand-in for Bergman, in a morgue he remembered, reaching out to his mother. Young compared Bergman's relationship with his mother, Karin, to Alma ("hungry for someone to listen to her and to love her") and Elisabet ("ravenous for precious time").

About the theme of duality, author Birgitta Steene wrote that Alma represents the soul and Elisabet is a "stern" goddess. Theologian Hans Nystedt called Elisabet a symbol of God, and Alma symbolic of mortal consciousness. Coates noted the "female face" or "near-Goddess" succeeding the God previously studied by Bergman, referring to Jungian theories to examine the themes of duality and identity; two different people, with a "grounding in oneself", trade identities. Coates described Elisabet as a fusion of the mythological figures Thanatos and Eros, with Alma as her "hapless counterpart", and a close-up suggesting death.

Psychology
Persona title reflects the Latin word for "mask" and Carl Jung's theory of persona, an external identity separate from the soul ("alma"). Jung believed that people project public images to protect themselves, and can come to identify with their personae. An interviewer asked Bergman about the Jungian connotations of the film's title, acknowledging an alternative interpretation that it references persona masks worn by actors in ancient drama, but saying that Jung's concept "admirably" matched the film. Bergman agreed, saying that Jung's theory "fits well in this case". Coates also connected masks to themes of identity and duality: "The mask is Janus-faced".

Alma's secret is revealed in her orgy monologue, and critic Robin Wood related it to a combination of shame and nostalgia perhaps indicating the character's sexual liberation. According to Wood, the incident touched on unfaithfulness and juvenile sexuality; in Swedish, the young boys are called "pojkar" and are in need of coaching. Arnold Weinstein wrote that Alma's story is the hardest-hitting example of the "cracks" in the character's mask, belying her persona of a nurse and leading to a "collapse of self". Her monologue is so intense that it verges on pornography, although there is no depiction of the sexual escapade.

Cinema historian P. Adams Sitney summarized the story as following the course of psychoanalysis: a referral, followed by the first interview, disclosures, and the discovery of the patient's root problem. According to Sitney, the story seems to begin from Alma's point of view; after Elisabet compares their hands, her point of view is revealed as the source of the story.

Another possible reference to psychology is that when Elisabet falls mute, the play she is in is Electra by Sophocles or Euripides. According to Wood, Bergman did not focus on Greek tragedy in his work but the character of Electra inspired the idea of the Electra complex. Sitney felt that Bergman's choice of play related to "sexual identities", a key concept in psychoanalysis.

Gender and sexuality
The story fits Bergman's motif of "warring women", seen earlier in The Silence and later in Cries and Whispers and Autumn Sonata. According to Professor Marilyn Johns Blackwell, Elisabet's resistance to speaking can be interpreted as resistance to her gender role. By depicting this tension as experienced primarily by women, Bergman may be said to "problematize the position of woman as other"; the role society assigns women is "essentially foreign to their subjecthood". Blackwell wrote that the attraction between Elisabet and Alma and the absence of male sexuality cohere with their identification with each other, creating a doubling that reveals the "multiple, shifting, self-contradictory identity" (a notion of identity that undermines male ideology). The theme of merging and doubling surfaces early in the film, when Alma says that she saw one of Elisabet's films and was struck by the thought that they were alike. Blackwell also writes that one of the film's original titles, A Piece of Cinematography, may allude to the nature of representation.

Analysts have noted possible lesbian under- and overtones. Alison Darren profiled Persona in her Lesbian Film Guide, calling Alma and Elisabet's relationship "halfway between love and hate"; they may come close to having sex in one scene, "though this might easily be an illusion". Scholar Gwendolyn Audrey Foster interpreted the film in feminist terms as a depiction of lesbianism, viewing the scene where Elisabet enters Alma's room as seduction. Professor Alexis Luko also felt that the characters' touching and resemblance in the scene, in addition to symbolizing their personalities merging, indicated intimacy and eroticism.

Foster believed that Elisabet's gaze presents Alma with questions about her engagement to Karl-Henrik. According to Foster, sexual encounters between men and women are associated with abortion; lesbian romance has an increasingly shared identity. But if Persona dramatizes a lesbian relationship, it is not clearly favorable, as it is later characterized by narcissism and violence. If lesbianism is considered a stronger version of female friendship, or motherly love, Alma and Elisabet's relationship replaces the depiction of the Oedipus complex in the prologue when the boy reaches for his mother in vain. According to Jeremi Szaniawski, Bergman's use of homoeroticism (gay and lesbian) in Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Cries and Whispers and Face to Face was a rebellion against his strict upbringing by Church of Sweden minister Erik Bergman.

Art and theatre
Persona is the Latin word for "mask" and refers to a mouthpiece actors wore to increase the audibility of their lines. In Greek drama, persona came to mean a character, separate from an actor. Bergman often used the theatre as a setting in his films.

Elisabet is a stage actress and, according to Singer, is seen in "mask-like makeup" suggesting a "theatrical persona". Singer wrote that Elisabet wears "thick and artificial eyelashes" even when she is not acting. Scholar Egil Törnqvist noted that when Elisabet is onstage as Electra, she looks away from the theatre audience and breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera. According to Törnqvist, Elisabet makes a fist, symbolizing her revolt against the notion of meaningful performance. Singer concluded that although Elisabet develops a very personal relationship with Alma, she cannot shed her persona as an actress and will remain lonely with "the hopeless dream of being".

According to Singer, Bergman confronts his viewers with "the nature of his art form". Literary critic Maria Bergom-Larsson wrote that Persona reflected Bergman's approach to filmmaking. Although Alma initially believes that artists "created out of compassion, out of a need to help", she sees Elisabet laugh at performances on a radio program and finds herself the subject of the actress's study. She rejects her earlier belief: "How stupid of me". As Elisabet studies Alma, Bergman studies them both.

Michaels wrote that Bergman and Elisabet share a dilemma: they cannot respond authentically to "large catastrophes", such as the Holocaust or the Vietnam War. Political columnist Carsten Jensen identified the Vietnam footage Elisabet sees as the 1963 self-immolation of Thích Quảng Đức. According to Jensen, photographs of Quảng Đức's death were widely circulated and were used in Persona. Academic Benton Meadows wrote that Elisabet sees herself in Quảng Đức's death, fearing that it would be a consequence of her silent rebellion. Törnqvist wrote that Elisabet is struck by the truth that the monk is a true rebel, while her rebellion is a cowardly retreat behind a persona of muteness.

Vampirism
Persona also includes symbolism about vampirism. In 1973, Dagens Nyheter critic Lars-Olaf Franzen interpreted Alma as a stand-in for the audience and Elisabet as an "irresponsible artist and vampire". According to the British Film Institute, Elisabet "vampiristically" devours Alma's personality; the actress is also seen drinking blood from Alma. Gervais wrote that Persona is "an impressionistic vampire film". Törnqvist called the vampire portrayal "Strindbergian", connecting it to the spider seen in the prologue and the "fat spider" mentioned in the screenplay (but omitted from the final cut).

Although psychologist Daniel Shaw interpreted Elisabet as a vampire and Alma as her "sacrificial lamb", Bergman replied when asked if Alma was entirely consumed: "No, she has just provided some blood and meat, and some good steak. Then she can go on. You must know, Elizabeth is intelligent, she's sensible, she has emotions, she is immoral, and she is a gifted woman, but she's a monster because she has an emptiness in her."

Style
Persona has been called an experimental film. Singer acknowledged Marc Gervais's theory that its style is a postmodern rejection of "realistic narration", although he said this was of secondary importance to its commentary on cinema. The Independent journalist Christopher Hooton said that symmetry was used and the fourth wall sometimes broken, quoting essayist Steven Benedict on the use of "reflections, splitting the screen, and shadows". The fourth wall seems to break when Alma and Elisabet look into the camera and when Elisabet takes photographs in the direction of the camera.

The BFI called Persona "stylistically radical", noting its use of close-ups. Senses of Cinema journalist Hamish Ford also noted its "radical aesthetics", citing a "genuinely avant-garde prologue". Critic Geoff Pevere called the prologue "one of the most audacious reset clicks in movie history". He summarized the blankness before a projector runs, leading to clips of classic animation, a comedic silent film, crucifixion, and a penis, concluding that it summarized cinema. The montage's imagery is "rapid-fire", with Bergman saying the penis is onscreen for one-sixth of a second and intended to be "subliminal". The sheep is from Luis Buñuel's 1929 Un Chien Andalou, and the personification of Death was used in Bergman's 1949 film Prison. Michaels linked the spider in the prologue with the "spider-god" in Bergman's 1961 Through a Glass Darkly. Törnqvist said that the spider is visible under a microscope, indicating its use for study. When the boy reaches out to his mother, it is to shift photographs of Ullmann and Andersson. In addition to the prologue, the story is interrupted by a midpoint celluloid break.

Scenes creating a "strange" or "eerie" effect include Elisabet entering Alma's room, where it is uncertain if she is sleepwalking or Alma is having a dream, and Mr. Vogler having sex with Alma; it is uncertain if he mistook her for Elisabet. Other scenes are "dreamlike—sometimes nightmarish". The story's small scale is supplemented with references to external horrors, such as images of self-immolation—included in the opening sequence and the hospital scene—and the Holocaust photograph, the subject of increasing close-ups.

Biographer Jerry Vermilye wrote that despite experimenting with color in 1964's All These Women, Persona represented Bergman and Nykvist's return to the "stark black-and-white austerity of earlier chamber pieces". They include Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence, with Vermilye calling Persona a sequel to the "trilogy". Bergman returned to Through a Glass Darkly's Fårö for its backdrop, which he used symbolically. According to Professor John Orr, an island setting offered "boldness and fluidity" that brought different dynamics to the drama. Orr wrote that the "island romanticism" was a transition from Bergman's earlier films into "dream and abstraction". Examining the visuals and the depiction of social isolation and mourning, critics Christopher Heathcote and Jai Marshall found parallels to Edvard Munch's paintings.

According to Vineberg, Ullmann and Andersson's acting styles are dictated by the fact that Andersson does nearly all the talking. She delivers monologues, and Ullmann is a "naturalistic mime". A notable exception is when Elisabet is coaxed into saying the word "nothing", which Vineberg called ironic. Elisabet speaks only 14 words; Bergman said, "The human face is the great subject of the cinema. Everything is there". Vineberg wrote that the performances use the "mirror exercise", in which the actresses look directly at each other; one makes facial movements which the other tries to imitate. Ford wrote that Ullmann's performance is defined by "twitching lips, ambivalent gazes and vampyric desire".

Music and other sounds also define Bergman's style. This includes the prologue, with a "discordant" score accompanied by dripping and a ringing telephone. In the scene where Elisabet meets Alma in her bedroom, foghorns accompany Werle's music. Musicologist Alexis Luko described the score as conveying "semantic meaning" with diabolus in musica ("the devil in music"), a common style in horror cinema. The addition of a foghorn indicates a meeting of "diegetic and non-diegetic", complementing the breaking of the fourth wall when Alma and Elisabet look at the audience. The music Elisabet hears in the hospital, Bach's Violin Concerto in E major, is meant to be "nice and soothing" and divert Elisabet from her mental torment. It fails to comfort; Wood calls it one of Bach's "most somber and tragic utterances", and the scene's lighting darkens accordingly. According to Luko, Elisabet's lack of sound (muteness) makes her fit "the cinematic profile of a powerful, pseudo-omniscient mute".

Development
According to Bergman, the story had its roots in a chance encounter with past collaborator Bibi Andersson in a Stockholm street. Andersson, who was with Liv Ullmann, introduced Ullmann to him. Ullmann placed the meeting in 1964, and said that Bergman recognized her and asked her on the spot if she would like to work with him. He said that an image of the two women formed in his mind; in the hospital, he found an "uncanny resemblance" between the actresses in photographs of them sunbathing. This inspired the beginning of his story, a vision of two women "wearing big hats and laying their hands alongside each other". Andersson said, "Liv and I had worked together before and we were very close". Bergman had been in a romantic relationship with Andersson and was attracted to Ullmann; of Persona's conception, Andersson said, "He saw our friendship, and he wanted to get ... inside of it. Involved".

Bergman wrote Persona in nine weeks while recovering from pneumonia, and much of his work was done in the Sophiahemmet hospital. With this project, he abandoned his practice of writing finished and comprehensive screenplays before photography, allowing the script to develop as production proceeded. In the screenplay, the story ends with the doctor announcing that Elisabet has resumed speaking, reunited with her family, and resumed acting. Alma remains on the island and plans to write Elisabet a letter until she sees the Holocaust photo and abandons her plan. Later in the production, this was replaced by the blood-drinking scene, Elisabet being taught to say the word "nothing" and Alma leaving the island.

Bergman appealed to filmmaker Kenne Fant for funding for the project. Supportive, Fant asked about the film's concept and Bergman shared his vision of women comparing hands. Fant assumed that the film would be inexpensive, and agreed to fund it. In his book Images, Bergman wrote, "Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover." He also said, "At some time or other, I said that Persona saved my life—that is no exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make that film, I would probably have been all washed up. One significant point: for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success". The filmmakers considered the titles Sonat för två kvinnor (Sonata for Two Women), Ett stycke kinematografi (A Piece of Cinematography), Opus 27, and Kinematografi, but Fant suggested something more accessible and the title was changed.

Casting
Bergman had planned to cast Andersson and Ullmann in The Cannibals, a large project he abandoned after becoming ill, but he still hoped to pair them in a project. Ullmann said that she began to be cast in Bergman's films beginning with the mute character, Elisabet: "It was because my face could say what he wanted to say. That made me the one he wanted to work with ... because it was my face and I also understood what he was writing". Steve Vineberg wrote that, with the conception of the project with Andersson and Ullmann, Bergman parted with his past uses of ensemble casts in films such as Smiles of a Summer Night and focused on two leads. Vineberg called the roles of Margaretha Krook and Gunnar Björnstrand "abbreviated guest appearances".

Bergman cast Jörgen Lindström as Elisabet's son after using him in his 1963 film The Silence. Lindström (born 1951) was a child actor, and played children in other films. Bergman was the uncredited narrator.

Filming
Principal photography took place on the island of Fårö (including Langhammars, with its rauks in the background, and Bergman's property at Hammars) and at Råsunda Studios in Stockholm. Shooting began on 19 July 1965 and wrapped by 15 September. Ullmann described the initial Stockholm shoot as marred by awkward performances and unprepared direction; the crew opted to retreat to Fårö, where Bergman found a house to shoot in. Fårö's weather was ideal during shooting; the crew redid much of the footage filmed in Stockholm, recreating the summer house on the Stockholm set and using a Fårö museum as the hospital.

Andersson said that she and Ullmann agreed to play their parts as different sides of the same personality, and they assumed that personality was Bergman's. The actress said that they tried to balance each other in their performances. Bergman told his actresses not to ask him what each scene meant; Ullmann believed that cinematographer Sven Nykvist was also not informed of the director's intentions and left to work intuitively.

Although the scene where Alma describes her orgy was in the screenplay, Andersson said in 1977 that Bergman had been advised to remove it from the film. She insisted that it be shot, volunteering to alter dialogue she felt was too obviously written by a man. The scene took two hours to shoot, using close-ups of Ullmann and Andersson in single takes. Andersson later said that while she thought some of her performances in films such as Wild Strawberries were "corny", she was proud of her work in Persona. Ullmann described her response shots as an unprepared, natural reaction to the story's erotic nature.

For the scene in which Andersson and Ullmann meet in the bedroom at night and their faces overlap, a large amount of smoke was used in the studio to make a blurrier shot. Bergman used a mirror to compose the shots.

Post-production
The screenplay called for a "close-up of Alma with a strange resemblance to Elisabet". On Fårö, Bergman conceived a shot where Ullmann and Andersson's faces merge into one. This was done by lighting what Bergman considered the unflattering side of each actress's face in different shots and combining the lighted sides. The actresses were unaware of the effect until a screening in the Moviola. Neither actress recognized herself in the resulting imagery, each assuming that the shot was of the other.

According to Ullmann, the scene where Alma describes Elisabet's motherhood was filmed with two cameras, one filming each actress, and shots of each were intended to be mixed in editing. Then Bergman decided that each angle communicated something important and used both in their entirety, one after the other.

Bergman was unhappy with the sound in the scene where Alma describes the orgy, so he told Andersson to reread the scene, which she did in a lower voice. It was recorded and dubbed in.

The score, by Lars Johan Werle, uses four cellos, three violins, and other instruments. Werle described his effort to meet Bergman's requests without a description of the scenes Werle would score: "Then he came with vague hints about how the films would look, but I understood him anyway and he gave me some keywords ... I was a little surprised to be part of an artistic work that I had so little time to digest ... One wonders how it is even possible that one could only see the movie once or twice and then compose the music." In addition to Werle's score, the filmmakers sampled Johann Sebastian Bach's Violin Concerto in E major.

Release
Persona was released on 31 August 1966, and its promotional premiere took place on 18 October 1966 at the Spegeln cinema in Stockholm. Its screenplay was published as a book in Sweden that year. The film's box-office losses qualified it for subsidies from the Swedish Film Institute. Combined with the institute's earlier production grant, the project received SEK1,020,000 from the SFI.

It opened in the U.S. on 6 March 1967, where it grossed $250,000. Distributed by United Artists, it debuted at the New York Film Festival with UA marketing highlighting the leads' similar appearance. The marketing quoted critics, particularly about Alma's erotic monologue. Persona finished its New York run after one month, which was considered disappointing. In Brazil, it was released as Quando Duas Mulheres Pecam (When Two Women Sin) to emphasize its sexuality. Persona was released in the United Kingdom in 1967, using subtitles when many foreign-language films were still dubbed.

Two scenes censored from the U.S. and U.K. versions of the film were a brief shot at the beginning of an erect penis and some of the translation of Alma's nighttime monologue about her ménage à quatre, oral sex and abortion. MGM archivist John Kirk restored the censored material, based on four translations, and translated 30 to 40 percent more of Alma's dialogue in the censored scene. Kirk's version was screened at the Film Forum in New York City and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2001. Much of the censored material was included in Region 1 in the MGM DVD released in 2004, and on The Criterion Collection's 2014 Blu-ray 2K restoration.

The 1999 Toronto International Film Festival featured a screening of Persona as part of "Dialogues: Talking with Pictures", with classic films and a talk by Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema. In February 2002, it screened in the Retrospective section of the 52nd Berlin International Film Festival.

Critical reception
The film was released to favorable reviews in the Swedish and U.S. press.

In Sweden, Dagens Nyheter critic Olaf Lagercrantz said that a cult following of Swedish critics had developed by October 1966 and coined the name Person(a)kult for them. In Svenska Dagbladet, Stig Wikander called it "a gnostic quest for divine nothingness". In 1966, theologian Hans Nystedt compared the film to the writings of Hjalmar Sundén. The film ranked 1st on Cahiers du Cinéma's Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1967.

The Swedish Film Institute magazine Chaplin reported that the Person(a)kult had spread beyond Sweden by 1967. In one of his early reviews, Roger Ebert gave the film four stars; he called it "a difficult, frustrating film", and said that it (and Elisabet) "stubbornly refuse to be conventional and to respond as we expect". Bosley Crowther, writing for The New York Times, called Persona a "lovely, moody film which, for all its intense emotionalism, makes some tough intellectual demands". Crowther wrote that its "interpretation is tough", and "Miss Ullmann and Miss Andersson just about carry the film—and exquisitely, too". According to the Variety staff, "There is no denying the absorbing theme and the perfection in direction, acting, editing and lensing"; they called Andersson's performance a "tour de force", concluding: "Bergman has come up with probably one of his most masterful films technically and in conception, but also one of his most difficult ones". Time's review stated that the film "fuses two of Bergman's familiar obsessions: personal loneliness and the particular anguish of contemporary woman". In the 1972 British Film Institute Sight & Sound poll, Persona was ranked the fifth-greatest film of all time, the highest placing of a Swedish film. Persona was 41st in Sight & Sound 's 2002 directors' ranking of the greatest films.

Essayists and critics have called Persona one of the 20th century's major artistic works, and Bergman's masterpiece. The Independent critic Geoffrey Macnab noted that a number of other critics considered it among the greatest films of all time. Empire's David Parkinson gave the film five stars in 2000, noting its variety of interpretations and attributing them to Bergman's distortion of the border between real life and fantasy and calling it a "devastating treatise on mortal and intellectual impotence". Ebert added it to his Great Movies list in 2001, calling it "a film we return to over the years, for the beauty of its images and because we hope to understand its mysteries". Peter Bradshaw gave it four of five stars in his 2003 The Guardian review, calling it "a startling, even gripping essay". For The Chicago Tribune, Michael Wilmington awarded it four stars in 2006 and praised it as "one of the screen's supreme works and perhaps Ingmar Bergman's finest film". In 2007, Aftonbladet called its prologue one of the more memorable moments of Bergman's filmography. The New Yorker's Pauline Kael said the end result was a "pity", but the scene where Alma describes her orgy is "one of the rare truly erotic sequences in movie history".

Reviewing Persona home video, Richard Brody credited Bergman for a work that shed realism with special effects and conveyed "a tactile visual intimacy", and praised the film's island setting. Leonard Maltin gave the film $3 1/2$ stars in his 2013 Movie Guide, calling it "haunting, poetic, for discerning viewers". According to Time Out's review, Elisabet can (despite her fraud) be understood: "not an easy film, but an infinitely rewarding one". Chicago Reader critic Dave Kehr wrote that it might be Bergman's best, but objected to its unoriginal ideas (for an experimental film) and tediousness. Emanuel Levy reviewed Persona in 2016, calling it a complicated, mysterious and artistic psychological drama with experimentation presenting a novel result.

In 1996, Persona was included in Movieline Magazine's "100 Greatest Foreign Films". The Village Voice ranked the film at number 102 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. Persona was included on Time's All-Time 100 best movies list and in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. In 2010, it was ranked 71st in Empire magazine's "100 Best Films of World Cinema". In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls, it was ranked the 17th-greatest film ever made in the critics' poll (tied with Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai) and 13th in the directors' poll. In the 2022 edition of Sight & Sound's Greatest films of all time list the film ranked 18th in the critics poll and 9th in the director's poll. In 2012 the film ranked sixth on the 25 best Swedish films of all time in a poll of 50 film critics and academics by film magazine FLM. In 2017, The Daily Telegraph called Persona one of "the most pretentious movies of all time" and a "wholly subjective" exercise. In 2018 the film ranked sixth on the BBC's list of the 100 greatest foreign-language films, as voted on by 209 film critics from 43 countries. In 2021 the film ranked 23rd on Time Out magazine's list of The 100 best movies of all time.

Accolades
Persona won the Best Film award at the 4th Guldbagge Awards. It was Bergman's first work to win the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film; his 1973 Scenes from a Marriage was his only other film so honoured. Although it was the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards, the film was not accepted by the academy.

Legacy
Some of Bergman's later films, such as Shame (1968) and The Passion of Anna (1969), have similar themes of the "artist as fugitive", guilt and self-hatred. Robert Altman's 1972 psychological horror film Images is influenced by Persona. Altman's 1977 film 3 Women takes cues from Bergman as Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek's characters (Millie and Pinky) shift roles and identities. A spoof of Persona appeared on the Canadian television program SCTV during the late 1970s. Woody Allen's films Love and Death (1975) and Stardust Memories (1980) contain brief references to the film. Jean-Luc Godard included a parody of Andersson's orgy monologue in his 1967 film Weekend, in a scene where Mireille Darc describes a threesome with a lover and his girlfriend involving eggs and a bowl of milk.

David Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive deals with similar themes of identity and has two female characters whose identities appear to merge. With its thematic similarities, the film's "mysterious dreamlike quality" is evidence of Bergman's (and particularly Persona's) influence. David Fincher's Fight Club refers to Persona subliminal erect penis. Parallels to "two (usually isolated) women in an intense relationship slowly blending and morphing into one another" may be seen in the competing ballerinas in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010) and the sisters in Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011). In 2016, The Independent reported on a video essay about Persona's influence that compared shots in Don't Look Now (1973), Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991); some shots predated Persona, and appear in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960).

After Bergman's death in 2007, his residence and the Persona filming location at Hammars on Fårö was assessed at 35 million kr and sold. A stage adaptation, Hugo Hansén's Persona, played in Stockholm in 2011 and starred Sofia Ledarp and Frida Westerdahl. Another adaptation, Deformerad Persona by Mattias Andersson and his sister, Ylva Andersson, addressed multiple sclerosis and premiered at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 2016. Ullmann and director Stig Björkman collaborated on a 2009 documentary, Scener från ett konstnärskap, with recordings of Bergman during the production of Persona.

title: Persona (1966 film)


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USS Chauncey (DD-296)

USS Chauncey (DD-296) was a Clemson-class destroyer (ship) built for the United States Navy during World War I.

Description
The Clemson class was a repeat of the preceding Wickes-class destroyer although more fuel capacity was added. The ships displaced 1290 LT at standard load and 1389 LT at deep load. They had an overall length of 314 ft, a beam of 30 ft and a draught of 10 ft. They had a crew of 6 officers and 108 enlisted men.

Performance differed radically between the ships of the class, often due to poor workmanship. The Clemson class was powered by two steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by four water-tube boilers. The turbines were designed to produce a total of 27000 shp intended to reach a speed of 35 kn. The ships carried a maximum of 371 LT of fuel oil which was intended gave them a range of 2500 nmi at 20 kn.

The ships were armed with four 4-inch (102 mm) guns in single mounts and were fitted with two 1-pounder guns for anti-aircraft defense. In many ships a shortage of 1-pounders caused them to be replaced by 3-inch (76 mm) guns. Their primary weapon, though, was their torpedo battery of a dozen 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes in four triple mounts. They also carried a pair of depth charge rails. A "Y-gun" depth charge thrower was added to many ships.

Construction and career
Chauncey named for Isaac Chauncey, was launched 29 September 1918 by Union Iron Works, San Francisco, California; sponsored by Miss D. M. Todd; commissioned 25 June 1919 and reported to the Pacific Fleet. From the time of her commissioning, Chauncey sailed from San Diego and Mare Island to Hawaii and along the Pacific coast taking part in fleet exercises, gunnery practice, and other training activities. From 15 July 1920 to 14 October 1921, she was in ready reserve at San Diego and Mare Island, then returned to active duty as flagship of Destroyer Division 31.

On the evening of 8 September 1923, Chauncey in company with a large group of destroyers was sailing through a heavy fog from San Francisco to San Diego, when a navigational error on board the first ship in her column turned that destroyer and the six that followed toward the rocky California coast rather than on a reach down Santa Barbara Channel. All seven destroyers, including Chauncey, went aground on the jagged rocks off Point Pedernales, in what was called the Honda Point Disaster.

Chauncey stranded upright, high on the rocks, near USS Young (DD-312), which had capsized. With none of her men lost, Chauncey at once went to the aid of Young, passing a line by which 70 of Young's crew clambered hand-over-hand to Chauncey. Swimmers from Chauncey then rigged a network of lifelines to the coastal cliffs, and both her men and Young's reached safety by this means. The abandoned Chauncey was wrecked by the surf, and was decommissioned 26 October 1923. All the hulks were sold for salvage and removal as of 25 September 1925.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: USS Chauncey (DD-296)


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Homelessness in Canada

Homelessness in Canada was not a social problem until the 1980s. The Canadian government housing policies and programs in place throughout the 1970s were based on a concept of shelter as a basic need or requirement for survival and of the obligation of government and society to provide adequate housing for everyone. Public policies shifted away from rehousing in the 1980s in wealthy Western countries like Canada, which led to a de-housing of households that had previously been housed. By 1987, when the United Nations established the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (IYSH), homelessness had become a serious social problem in Canada. The report of the major 1987 IYSH conference held in Ottawa said that housing was not a high priority for government, and this was a significant contributor to the homelessness problem. While there was a demand for adequate and affordable housing for low income Canadian families, government funding was not available. In the 1980s a "wider segment of the population" began to experience homelessness for the first time – evident through their use of emergency shelters and soup kitchens. Shelters began to experience overcrowding, and demand for services for the homeless was constantly increasing. A series of cuts were made to national housing programs by the federal government through the mid-1980s and in the 1990s. While Canada's economy was robust, the cuts continued and in some cases accelerated in the 1990s, including cuts to the 1973 national affordable housing program. The government solution for homelessness was to create more homeless shelters and to increase emergency services. In the larger metropolitan areas like Toronto the use of homeless shelters increased by 75% from 1988 to 1998. Urban centres such as Montreal, Laval, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary all experienced increasing homelessness.

In Action Plan 2011, the Federal Government of Canada proposed $120 million annually from April 2014 until April 2019—with $70 million in new funding—to renew its Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS) with a focus on the Housing First model. Private or public organizations across Canada were eligible for HPS subsidies to implement Housing First programs.

Definition
In 2007 most research and programs in Canada focused on "absolute homelessness" and there was no consistent definition of homelessness. In 2012 the York University-based Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN) released the first Canadian definition of homelessness.

"'Homelessness describes the situation of an individual or family without stable, permanent, appropriate housing, or the immediate prospect, means and ability of acquiring it. It is the result of systemic or societal barriers, a lack of affordable and appropriate housing, the individual/household’s financial, mental, cognitive, behavioural or physical challenges, and/or racism and discrimination. Most people do not choose to be homeless, and the experience is generally negative, unpleasant, stressful and distressing.'"

Stephen Gaetz, a homelessness researcher at York University, argued that the detailed classification of homelessness provided governments with more "precision" in created effective programs to respond to specific needs. The report cites four categories of homelessness, unsheltered, emergency-sheltered, provisionally-accommodated, and at risk of homelessness. The definition received a lot of support from advocates for the homeless. Critics included Peter Goldring, an Alberta MP, member of the Edmonton Committee to End Homelessness, who argued that the CHRN's definition of homelessness painted an overly broad picture including those who were "having a hard time financially." Goldring felt that, "You don't want to look at it coldly, but they're really not in desperate need until they're holding that eviction notice in their hand."

Homeless count
By 2008 the annual homeless count was considered to be a politically charged and methodologically contentious issue. The federal estimate of the core number of homeless people in Canada was 200,000 in 2005, or about 1 per cent of the population. Homeless advocates estimated it to be closer to 20,000 annually, or 30,000 on any given night plus those in the hidden homeless category. This includes 6,000 youth nightly and 30,000 youth annually.

Cost of homelessness
Based on the more conservative figure, the annual cost of homelessness in Canada in 2008 was approximately $5.1 to $7 billion in emergency services, organizations, and non-profits.

Misconceptions
Homelessness is a chronic problem for only a small minority of people; the vast majority of individuals are "one-time only" shelter users or experience episodic homelessness. However, this distinctly different subgroup of individuals who are "chronically homeless" consume about half of shelter beds and available resources at any given time.

Some of the homeless who make use of homeless shelters are also employed. Individuals and families are often simply priced out of private housing markets. In 1999, 2.8 million Canadian households (about 26%) fell below the minimum amount required to afford a basic home, gauged at $25,920. Five years later, this number rose to 3.2 million households (remaining about 26%).

History
The term "homeless" came into use in Canada after 1962 in reference to people who were "unhoused" versus those simply living in poor-quality housing. Previously, the "homeless" was a general term applied mostly to transient men with no family ties, such as the migrant workers who travelled by freight hopping during the Great Depression.

Homelessness remained a minor concern as long as extremely cheap accommodation was available in 'skid row' rooming houses or flophouses located in the poorest parts of most major cities. Even the most destitute could find some form of housing, even if its quality was abysmal.

At the end of the Second World War in 1946, the federal government created the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to make mortgages and home ownership more accessible to people and organizations. The surplus generated by the CMHC was used in the 1980s to fund non-profit, Aboriginal, and rent supplement housing.

Homelessness in Canada was not a social problem until the 1980s, according to the University of Toronto's J. David Hulchanski keynote lecture at a 2009 conference, "Housing and Homelessness in Canada". Hulchanski said that public housing policies through the 1970s were based on a concept of shelter as a basic need for survival and that both society and government had responsibilities and obligations to see that see that everyone was adequately housed. Until the 1980s, this approach to housing policy saw "urban planners, public health officials, and social workers" focus on "rehousing people into better housing and neighbourhoods", not only in Canada but in other wealthier Western countries. About 20,000 social housing units were created every year following the 1973 amendments to the National Housing Act.

Starting in the mid-1980s, the federal government initiated a series of cuts in funding for national housing programs.

During the 1980s the social problem of dehousing had emerged in which people who were previously housed started to experience dehousing.

During 1987, the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (IYSH), conferences on homelessness were held all across Canada. A 1988 report endorsed by participants at the Ottawa conference, said that a "significant component of the homelessness problem is that housing has not been a high priority for governments at any level." The report noted that while there was a demand for "adequate and affordable" housing for low income households, there was insufficient "government funds to carry out effective social housing programs".

A 1999 comprehensive Parliamentary Research Bureau report said that while it was difficult to provide exact statistics on the number of people experiencing homelessness in the 1980s in Canada, their research showed that homelessness was increasing and that it affected a "wider segment of the population". This was evident as groups of people began to use emergency shelters and soup kitchens for the first time; shelters were becoming overcrowded, and the demand for services for the homeless was constantly increasing.

Despite Canada's economy this trend continued, and perhaps even accelerated in the 1990s

. For example, in Toronto admissions to homeless shelters increased by 75% between 1988 and 1998. After 1993 the national affordable housing program initiated in 1973 was cut and Canada's focus in addressing homelessness in the 1990s was to create more homeless shelters and emergency services. A decade later in 2003 the federal government resumed spending on housing investment at $2.03 billion, a 25% decline from 1993 levels of $1.98 billion when adjusted for inflation.

Following changes to Canada's National Housing Act housing act in 1996 to give the CMHC "more flexibility", it was able to directly fund social housing and its role in supporting new and existing affordable housing diminished. Today the CMHC still exists, and its annual surpluses ($7.6 billion in 2006) raises questions as to why some of this money cannot be spent on new housing initiatives.

On December 19, 2006, Prime Minister Harper announced social policies with $526 million of funding to tackle poverty and homelessness in Canada. The Homelessness Partnering Strategy received $270 million and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation received $246 million to refurbish and renovate affordable housing, as well as to improve access for homeless people to various services and supports such as health and substance abuse treatment programs. Activists protested at Human Resources and Social Services Minister Diane Finley's offices in Ottawa.

The first Canadian national report card on homelessness was compiled by the Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN) and the National Alliance to End Homelessness in 2013.

Causes
Factors that can lead an individual to become homeless vary widely, however the most common reasons include financial challenges, conflict or abuse in previous homes, and health issues. Other factors can include mental disorders, leaving foster care, exiting from jail or hospitalization, immigration, rising housing costs and decreased rent controls, federal and provincial downloading of housing programs, and low social assistance rates.

While the causes are complex, the solutions to homelessness may be simple: "Homelessness may not be only a housing problem, but it is always a housing problem; housing is necessary, although sometimes not sufficient, to solve the problem of homelessness." Policy changes are often criticized for punishing the poor instead of trying to solve the underlying problem.

Lack of low-income housing

While in 1966 30,000 new low-income housing units had been built across Canada, this had fallen to 7,000 in 1999. In the city of Calgary, with one of the most acute housing shortages, only 16 new units of rental housing were built in 1996.

Deinstitutionalization

The 1950s and 1960s also saw an international movement towards deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, moving them out of asylums and other facilities, and releasing them into the community. Studies found that the vast majority of those who had been placed in asylums could be healthy and productive members of society if placed in the community and provided with the proper care and medication.

Thus over these decades the number of people confined to mental institutions fell dramatically from just under 70,000 to about 20,000. However, while great savings were made by shutting down empty institutions much of this money was absorbed by general government funds, and did not make it into community care.

No assurances were made that those discharged had access to and were taking the medication they needed. While some of those discharged did integrate with the community, a significant number, estimated at 75%, did not. Many of these individuals became homeless. Today up to 40% of homeless have some sort of mental illness.

Justice system and homelessness
In a paper published in 2010, York University professor, Stephen Gaetz, argued that, "[p]risoners who are sentenced or who are awaiting trial often lose their jobs and housing, and without support, wind up in homeless shelters and drop-ins upon release ... When prisoners become homeless, their chances of reoffending increase."

In 2005 Alberta initiated a three-year program offering an "alternative to sending people to jail or helping them when they are released". Alberta's Pathways to Housing program, which includes about $7 million in provincial money, has been helping homeless Calgarians who have been in and out of the corrections system due to unpaid tickets for petty crimes.

Poverty in Canada
Poverty remains prevalent with certain groups in Canada. The measurement of poverty has been a challenge as there is no official government measure. Some groups, like the Canadian Council on Social Development and the National Anti-Poverty Organization, believe the low-income cut off published by Statistics Canada is applicable as a poverty measure regardless of whether its intent or designation is to be one. They have argued, that as it stands, the LICO is the best measure available that accurately measures a relative poverty rate. The LICO fell to a near-record low of 9.5% in 2006, down from a recent high of 16.7% in 1994.

In the 2005 census, 702,650 Canadians were considered to be at-risk for homelessness in that they spent more than 50 percent of their household income on shelter. Lack of income security combined with the lack of affordable housing creates the problem of "hidden" homelessness. The "hidden homeless" may actually fall back and forth between homelessness and being housed, making the problem of homelessness much larger than that identified in street or shelter counts. Homelessness is a big problem in major Canadian cities due to the number of people and the cost of housing in cities.

Cuts to Social Assistance (welfare)
In the late 1990s, under Finance Minister Paul Martin, large cuts were made to transfer payments to Canada's provinces. At the same time, Canada removed a long-standing requirement of each province and territory to provide a livable rate of social assistance to all those in need. This led to a series of cuts to welfare rates and tightened eligibility rules, with many provinces competing with each other to offer the lowest assistance so those in need would leave. Alberta even offered bus tickets for welfare recipients to leave the province. In 2002, B.C.'s newly elected Liberal government introduced welfare reforms which in the coming years removed tens of thousands from that province's welfare rolls. All of this has had the effect of leaving thousands of people without the means to pay for even the most modest accommodation, resulting in many Canadians having no home and thus relying on homeless shelters or else sleeping outside.

Indigenous living conditions
People of Indigenous background experience disproportionate levels of unstable housing and homelessness, with 1 in 15 Indigenous persons in urban centres experiencing homelessness, compared to 1 in 128 for the general population. First Nation women have the lowest income rate of any group in Canada, and experience the highest rate of violent assaults. They also have a lack of mobility, due in part to reserve laws, and inability to own property.

Indigenous youth are overrepresented in the homeless population of Canada. Systematic discrimination has contributed to this as well as their overrepresentation in child welfare systems. When Europeans colonized Canada, indigenous peoples experienced an alienation from traditional forms of subsistence that occurred. There was also a loss of culture when the colonizing populations took over indigenous land and subjected them to European ways of life. One way this loss of culture can be seen is through residential schools. Survivors of residential schools faced physical, sexual, and emotional trauma. The European settlers used these schools as a tool to assimilate indigenous youth, which has resulted in decades of trauma that can still be seen in indigenous communities today.

Some researchers, and Indigenous Activists, argue that people living on reserve housing should be considered partly homeless, due to poor living conditions. Since Canada's definition of homelessness includes unsuitable, unstable, or unaffordable housing, reserve housing can be classified under this.

Public policy
The National Homeless Initiative (NHI), created in 1999, was the federal secretariat most directly responsible for homelessness matters until its closure in 2007. The NHI was created to fund transitional housing and a range of services for homeless people across the country. NHI funded the federal program Supporting Community Partnerships Initiative (SCPI) which covered the costs of temporary shelters and services for the homeless.

The federal government replaced the NHI with the Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS) which was allocated to spend $270 million between 2007 and 2009. In September 2008, the Government of Canada announced that it would set aside funding for housing and homelessness programs of $387.9 million per year for the next five years.

Canada was criticized in 2009 by the United Nations for lacking a national housing strategy (lacking citations). At that point, the federal governments' expenditures were cost-sharing, one-time only funding initiatives that lack long-term leadership on homelessness. The United Nations has also noted the lack of information on these expenditures, including the number of houses produced.

In 2017, the federal government began a 10-year National Housing Strategy which has up to now committed over $72 billion to initiatives such as combatting homelessness and expanding housing supply.

Housing has been declared a fundamental human right. Canada helped to draft the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights that includes a right to access housing in Article 25. Canada also ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in 1976, which recognizes an adequate standard of living, including housing, in Article 11.

Homeless advocates maintain that government funding should be spent on securing affordable housing versus funding more homelessness programs.

Alberta
In 2008, the Alberta Secretariat for Action on Homelessness's Plan for Alberta, adopted a goal of ending homelessness in Alberta by 2019 with a focus on three key areas: rapid re-housing of homeless Albertans, providing client-centered supports to re-housed clients, and preventing homelessness. Pathways to Housing Canada uses the Housing First model, a "client-driven strategy that provides immediate access to an apartment without requiring initial participation in psychiatric treatment or treatment for sobriety."

Clients pay 30 percent of their income towards their rent: 85 percent of Pathways to Housing clients receive Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) benefits and 15 percent receive

In 2007 Calgary's Pathways to Housing campaign included the opening of the Alex By 2013 Calgary's Pathways to Housing had 150 individuals in scatter site homes. The Alex Pathways to Housing uses the Housing First model, but it also uses Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), an integrated approach to healthcare where clients access a team of "nurses, mental health specialists, justice specialists and substance abuse specialists." Director Sue Fortune is committed to the 10 Year Plan To End Homelessless in the Calgary Region. Fortune reported that the Housing First approach resulted in a 66 percent decline in days hospitalized (from one year prior to intake compared to one year in the program), a 38 percent decline in times in emergency room, a 41 percent decline in EMS events, a 79 percent decline in days in jail and a 30 percent decline in police interactions.

British Columbia
In 2001, in British Columbia the service and shelter costs of homeless people ranged from $30,000 to $40,000 annually versus $22,000 to $28,000 per year for formerly homeless persons housed in social housing.

Homelessness in Vancouver
In 2011, there were about 2,651 homeless people in Vancouver.

title: Homelessness in Canada


text:
Spatial resolution

In physics and geosciences, the term spatial resolution refers to distance between independent measurements, or the physical dimension that represents a pixel of the image. While in some instruments, like cameras and telescopes, spatial resolution is directly connected to angular resolution, other instruments, like synthetic aperture radar or a network of weather stations, produce data whose spatial sampling layout is more related to the Earth's surface, such as in remote sensing and satellite imagery.

title: Spatial resolution


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Central Serbia

Central Serbia (централна Србија), also referred to as Serbia proper (ужа Србија), is the region of Serbia lying outside the autonomous province of Vojvodina to the north and the disputed Kosovo region to the south. Central Serbia is a term of convenience, not an administrative division of Serbia as such, and does not have any form of separate administration. Broadly speaking, Central Serbia is the historical core of modern Serbia, which emerged from the Serbian Revolution (1804–17) and subsequent wars against the Ottoman Empire. In the following century, Serbia gradually expanded south, acquiring South Serbia, Kosovo, Sandžak and Vardar Macedonia, and in 1918 – following the unification and annexation of Montenegro and unification of Austro-Hungarian areas left of the Danube and Sava (Vojvodina) – it merged with other South Slavic territories into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The current borders of Central Serbia were defined after World War II, when Serbia became a republic within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with Kosovo and Vojvodina as its autonomous provinces.

Geography
Central Serbia takes up, roughly, the territory of Serbia between the natural borders consisting of the Danube and Sava (in the north), the Drina (in the west), and the "unnatural" border to the southwest with Montenegro, south with Kosovo and North Macedonia, and to the east with Bulgaria, with a small strip of the Danube with Romania in the northeast. The Danube and Sava divides central Serbia from the Serbian province of Vojvodina, while the Drina divides Serbia from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Great Morava, a major river, goes through central Serbia. Extensions of three major mountain chains are located within Serbia proper: Dinaric Alps in the west and south, and the Carpathians and Balkan Mountains in the east.

Some notable geographical regions located in central Serbia are: Šumadija, Mačva, the Timok Valley (including the Negotin Valley), Pomoravlje, Podunavlje, Posavina, Podrinje, Zlatibor and Raška.

History

In the Roman period, "Moesia" was the name for a region that included Serbia proper. Viminacium (present-day Kostolac) was the capital of the province of Moesia Superior. Slavs (Sclaveni) overwhelmed the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries. The Serbs, a Slavic tribe, were known to have held the area of what is today southwest Serbia in the Early Middle Ages, while the Royal Frankish Annals mention the Braničevci and Timočani, in the eastern parts, in the 9th century. Raška, situated in the southwest, was the core of the medieval Serbian state; Stari Ras has been identified as a capital of the Grand Principality of Serbia. Serbia eventually expanded its borders to the east. The area of most of Serbia proper, as well as areas in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Montenegro, Kosovo, and northern Macedonia were called "the Serbian lands", included in the styles of medieval Serbian rulers. King Stefan Dragutin of Syrmia (r. 1282–1316) had two capitals, Debrc and Belgrade. After the fall of the Serbian Empire, the "Moravian Serbia" under Lazar (r. 1373–89) and Stefan Lazarević (r. 1389–1402) corresponded roughly to Serbia proper. Kruševac was the capital of Moravian Serbia, until the Ottoman conquests in the 15th century, and the establishment of the Serbian Despotate, with the capital in Belgrade. After the Ottoman conquest of the Serbian Despotate, the Sanjak of Smederevo was established, initially seated in Smederevo, and eventually, in Belgrade after its fall in 1521 (hence called the "Pashaluk of Belgrade").

Between 1718 and 1739, the Sanjak of Smederevo was occupied by the Habsburg monarchy, which administered the area as the Kingdom of Serbia. The Serbian Militia operated throughout Serbia proper during the 1737–39 war. The war ended in Ottoman victory, and returning of the sanjak. The northern half of Serbia proper was briefly under Habsburg occupation during the 1787–91 war, then returned. With the First Serbian Uprising (1804–13), the sanjak became a de facto Serbian state, known in historiography as "Revolutionary Serbia". It was retaken by the Ottomans in 1813, however, the Second Serbian Uprising (1815–17) saw Serbia recognized as an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire. In 1878, Serbia became a fully independent state, also enlarging its territory to the south-east. The 1878 borders correspond to present-day Central Serbia save for small parts in the south-west.

In the Balkan Wars (1912–13), Serbia further expanded its borders to the south, taking control of much of present-day Kosovo and North Macedonia. Further territorial gains were made in the north (today's Vojvodina) and south-west (Sandžak region) in 1918, after World War I. Serbia became part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on December 1, 1918. Serbia proper did not have a separate political status within the Kingdom; in 1929, when new provinces of the Kingdom were formed, Serbia proper was divided between five banovine, one of which (Morava Banovina) was established in the east with its capital in Niš.

Between 1941 and 1944, most of the territory was part of the area governed by the Military Administration in Serbia under German Wehrmacht occupation with a Serbian puppet government. The southwestern region of Sandžak was occupied by Italy and annexed to the neighbouring Italian governorate of Montenegro; southern Kosovo was annexed to Albania while southeastern parts annexed by Bulgaria.

The Axis occupation ended in 1944 with the liberation of Yugoslavia by the Yugoslav Partisans; Serbia was formed as one of the republics of the new socialist Yugoslavia. In 1945, Vojvodina and Kosovo became autonomous provinces within Serbia, thus the part of Serbia that was outside these two regions became known as uža Srbija ("Serbia proper"). At the beginning of the 1990s, the term uža Srbija was replaced with the new term Centralna Srbija ("Central Serbia") which was used in all official publications of the Serbian government that referred to the region.

With the formation of new statistical regions of Serbia in 2009–10, three statistical regions: Belgrade, Šumadija and Western Serbia and Southern and Eastern Serbia form Central Serbia.

Administrative divisions
Districts of Serbia, according to the Statistical regions of Serbia.

Demographics
Ethnic groups of Central Serbia according to the 2022 census:

 * Serbs: 4,169,454 (84.97%)
 * Bosniaks: 153,083 (3.12%)
 * Romani: 90,998 (1.85%)
 * Albanians: 59,752 (1.22%)
 * Vlachs: 20,828 (0.42%)
 * ethnic Muslims: 10,592 (0.23%)
 * Bulgarians: 11,795 (0.24)
 * Montenegrins: 7,814 (0.15%)
 * Croats: 6,423 (0.13%)
 * Yugoslavs: 14,705 (0.30%)
 * Macedonians (ethnic group) 7,746 (0.15%)

In 2022, most of the municipalities of Central Serbia had an ethnic Serb majority, three municipalities (Novi Pazar, Tutin, and Sjenica) had a Bosniak majority, two municipalities (Bujanovac and Preševo) had an Albanian majority and two municipalities (Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad) had a Bulgarian majority.

title: Central Serbia