Liv Ullmann, the recipient of the Sarasota Film Festival’s 2008 Master of Cinema Award and the star or director of a dozen films on the Festival schedule, sat down with Sony Pictures Classics president Michael Barker last night for a chat before a packed and fawning crowd.

Dressed in a low-cut black pantsuit bracketed by diamond earrings and killer heels, quick with self-deprecating quips and eager to offer candid, perfectly paced anecdotes, her faded Noweigian accent occasionally taking on the lilting cadences of a woman a third her age (she’s a big fan of the word “whatever”), Ullmann came off as loquaciously eccentric and yet completely clear-eyed about past, present and future. Paying special attention to Ullmann’s triumphs with Ingmar Bergman and failures in 70s Hollywood, Barker and Ullmann traced the actress/directors career from the making of Persona to the psychic impulse that led her to visit Bergman on his death bed. Highlights after the jump.

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