title: Autogas

text: Whilst historically autogas was excise-free, it began being imposed on all vehicle fuels that were not previously subject to excise in 2011 and was added incrementally up to 2015. The excise on autogas started at 2.5 cents per litre in 2011 and reached 12.5 cents per litre in 2015. By comparison, the excise on petrol will remain at its existing 38 cents per litre. The additional excise on autogas is being offset somewhat by a subsidy that was implemented in 2006 for private motorists, paying either to convert their existing vehicle to autogas, or for purchasing a new vehicle that was manufactured to operate on autogas. The subsidy does not apply to business vehicles or vehicles with a gross vehicle mass of over 3500 kilograms. In addition to the subsidy provided by the Australian federal government, the Western Australian government also provides a subsidy under the long-running LPG subsidy scheme.


title: Autogas

text: The use of autogas (called LPG in both French and Dutch speaking Belgium) was once very popular in Belgium, thanks to the subsidies given by the government to install conversion kits. Since, 2003, when the subsidies disappeared, the number of cars running on LPG has decreased and the number of cars running on diesel has increased. This was partly due to the tax incentives to purchase diesel cars. In recent years, the use of autogas as a vehicle fuel has accounted for less than 2% of vehicle fuel use in Belgium. At the end of 2003, there was an estimate of 93,000 autogas-powered vehicles on Belgium, supported by 600 refuelling stations. In 2010 there were 33,482 cars equipped with LPG and in 2012 it went down to 22,265. Since 2012 there has been a slight increase in the number of autogas-powered vehicles of around 14%. This increase is mainly due to the phasing-out of the tax incentives to buy diesel cars. The number of refuelling stations equipped with LPG has increased and in 2012 there were 727 stations.


title: Autogas

text: In Belgium, autogas is totally free of excises, but not of VAT. , the price of a litre of autogas is around a third of the price of a litre of diesel, making it the cheapest car fuel available in Belgium. This is a strong incentive for cross-border LPG refuelling traffic with neighbouring countries, especially with France, where LPG is much more expensive.


title: Autogas

text: To compensate for the loss of tax revenue, Belgian cars equipped with LPG pay a higher road tax than petrol or compressed natural gas (CNG) cars. In a Government's effort to incentivate the use of LPG cars, the registration tax paid by LPG cars is lower than the registration tax of CNG, petrol and diesel cars because. Thus since 2013, brand-new LPG cars (and LPG cars with less than one year of age) benefit from an important reduction in registration duty.


title: Autogas

text: Despite the fact that autogas is excise free in Belgium, it is the cheapest car fuel in Belgium and that it enjoys an important reduction in registration duty, autogas has never reached again the levels of use that it once had in the 1990s. Belgium does not provide with subsidies for LPG or CNG car installations. The current subsidies provided to CNG car installations since 2014 are provided by the natural gas private industry.


title: Autogas

text: Since 2013, OPEL is the only distributor that still sells brand-new factory-installed LPG cars in Belgium.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas consumption in Bulgaria accounted for 14% the total fuel consumption in 2003, an amount which has tripled since 1999. By the end of 2003, there were an estimated 195,000 autogas-powered vehicles on the road, with around 1,500 refuelling stations. Autogas is also very popular with commercial users in Bulgaria, as 90% of minibuses and taxicabs were able to run on the fuel. Vehicles originally manufactured to operate on autogas are virtually non-existent in Bulgaria, so the vast majority of the vehicles are third-party conversions.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas, or auto propane as it is more commonly referred to in Canada, is the most popular alternative fuel in the country. It is primarily used by high consumption public and private fleets (taxis, couriers, school buses and transit vehicles).


title: Autogas

text: Canadian auto propane demand began to increase dramatically in the 1980s after the Government of Canada introduced a grant in 1981 for consumers to convert their vehicles to run on propane in response to national energy security concerns. Some provinces also offered various grants and incentives for propane conversions. Vehicle conversions reached approximately 200,000 in the early 1990s, and auto propane was estimated to be available at over 5,000 locations. The Federal Government grant was discontinued in 1985. Auto propane demand began to decline in the early 1990s due to changes in technology and relatively low cost of gasoline and diesel fuel.


title: Autogas

text: An increase in demand has occurred since 2010, as a result of lower prices relative to gasoline and diesel fuel and improved technology. In 2014, it is estimated that the number of auto propane vehicles on the road in Canada is between 25,000 – 50,000 and the number of fuelling stations is 2,000. In 2014, auto propane amounted to 7% of the total domestic propane consumption in Canada.


title: Autogas

text: Auto propane is desirable for fleets due to the fact that in many cities in Canada it costs about 40% less than gasoline and diesel. Auto propane also enjoys favourable fuel tax status and is exempt from the federal excise tax and is taxed at a lower rate than gasoline and diesel in every province and territory. Average auto propane prices are reported by Natural Resources Canada.


title: Autogas

text: The only OEM vehicle available for purchase in Canada is the Blue Bird Corporation Propane-Powered Vision. Others are pending. Aftermarket conversions represent the balance of the market. These conversions are typically performed on gasoline vehicles and may be either mono fuel (propane only) or dual fuel (operate on propane or gasoline). These conversions are performed in accordance to provincial and territorial regulations and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) "B149.5 – Installation code for propane fuel systems and tanks on highway vehicles".


title: Autogas

text: Another propane option gaining some popularity is diesel blend where propane is blended into the diesel fuel as it is injected into the combustion chamber. This reduces diesel consumption and improves emissions.


title: Autogas

text: The cost to convert a vehicle to propane in Canada is approximately to for the current vapour or liquid fuel injected technology, and fleet users can expect a payback on the conversion cost within a year. Converting a vehicle to propane is approximately half the cost of converting a vehicle to natural gas in Canada. In just about every case, a propane dispensing facility will cost significantly less money than any other fuel, including gasoline or diesel. Installing a propane fuelling station will typically cost up to 95% less than a natural gas fuelling station. A typical 2,000 USWG dispenser will cost approximately and a larger high volume dispenser with a 5,000 USWG tank will cost to , not including site costs.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas consumption in China has grown rapidly since the 1990s, has slowed down in the early 2000s, but has started to grow again in recent years. In 2009, autogas refuelling stations have spread to 25 cities and has become a major alternative fuel in China. Motorcycles account for a large portion of the autogas, with over 260,000 autogas motorcycles in Shanghai alone. In Shenyang, the local government is encouraging public transport to convert to autogas, and as of 2009 over 160,000 taxicabs run on the fuel as well as over 2,500 buses. The city of Guangzhou accounted for 46.56% of national autogas consumption in 2009. Only 24% of China's Liquefied Petroleum Gas is produced domestically.


title: Autogas

text: As of 2008, approximately 30,000 Croatians drove using autogas, which at the time was available from 90 stations throughout the nation. In 2009, it was estimated that there were 60,000 autogas-powered cars on Croatia's roads, and in 2010, it is estimated that 150,000 drivers in Croatia were using autogas. This recent increase in popularity has largely been attributed to the lower price of autogas compared to petrol or diesel.


title: Autogas

text: In 2009, Croatia exported 51% of domestically produced liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), leaving only 49% for consumption. Out of that 49%, 45% of domestically sold LPG is used as autogas. Damir Stambuk from the Croatian Ministry of Economy, which is also responsible for energy, said that Croatia is not yet ready for a regular autogas market due to a small network of stations, but in the future it will be.


title: Autogas

text: At the end of 2003, the roads of the Czech Republic had an estimated 145,000 autogas vehicles with 350 refuelling stations.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas has become uncommon in Denmark since taxes have risen, making LPG more expensive than unleaded petrol. As a result, there is no customer demand, leaving only around 13 refuelling stations. The stations are run by Shell, YX, OK, Uno-X, Q8 and Statoil.


title: Autogas

text: It was estimated that France would have over 62,500 autogas vehicles on the road by the end of 2010. By the end of 2003, there were an estimated 190,000 autogas vehicles in use with almost 1,900 refuelling stations. In 2005, autogas accounted for around 0.4% of the total automotive fuel use.


title: Autogas

text: In Germany, the fuel is called "Autogas" as well (CNG is known as "Erdgas"). There were 6,700 fuel stations selling autogas in 2014, supplying about 500,000 registered gas-fueled cars (1.1 percent of all cars in Germany). mylpg.eu lists 7.240 stations in 2016. In addition to filling stations, numerous suppliers of industrial gas run dedicated autogas stations on their premises. Most filling pumps use the ACME adapter but DISH can also be found. Special fuel tax rates make autogas rather cheap in Germany (about per litre while 95-octane unleaded is per litre).


title: Autogas

text: LPG or autogas, despite having existed for about three decades in Greece (initially used only in taxis, in 1999 it was legalized for all vehicles), has become popular in the last three to five years, mostly due to the increase in petrol prices. The number of refuelling points as well as conversion workshops is rapidly increasing. Currently (2012) there are about 404 filling stations. Some companies (e.g., Fiat, Toyota, Subaru, Opel, Chevrolet) offer some models with bi-fuel capability. The price at the end of 2012 was about 55% of the price of petrol. The most common term used for it is "ygraerio", meaning "liquid gas".


title: Autogas

text: In Hong Kong, all taxicabs bar electric taxis rely on autogas. Many public light buses also rely on autogas.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas was very popular in Ireland during the early 1980s, and the country had a large and extensive network of refueling points. It proved popular at the time particularly as Ireland was in a deep recession for much of the 1980s. However autogas fell out of favor in the late 1990s and 2000s due to unreliable early autogas systems and as the country experienced massive economic growth and unprecedented wealth demand for conversions and autogas subsequently dwindled.


title: Autogas

text: However, as Ireland once again entered economic recession, austerity measures and increased fuel taxation saw the price of traditional Diesel and petrol fuels skyrocket to record highs. This has seen a small revival of autogas in Ireland in 2012 with new conversion outlets and refueling points opening again. It has been re-introduced to Ireland by the new Polish diaspora living in the country drawing upon their knowledge and expertise from Europe's biggest autogas market.


title: Autogas

text: There is a much larger market for Autogas in Northern Ireland, due to UK Government supports. There are currently 86 LPG outlets on the island of Ireland with 45 in Northern Ireland and 41 in the Republic of Ireland.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas is very popular in Italy. With over 1,000,000 autogas vehicles on the road, it is the second largest autogas market in the European Union, after Poland. Italy was one of the first countries in the world to introduce autogas, which happened in the 1950s. In the first half of 2010 alone, more than 170,000 new autogas cars were registered. General Motors has been especially successful in Italy, with two-thirds of the vehicles sold in 2008 being autogas-capable.


title: Autogas

text: As of 2013, Japan has about 280,000 autogas vehicles on the road, which is less than in recent years. However, the number of autogas vehicles on Japan's roads has been very unstable. The first autogas taxicabs were introduced in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. With a sharp decline in the 1990s, the number started to rise again in 2003. Between 2004 and 2010, the number dropped. The vast majority of autogas vehicles on Japanese roads are taxicabs or commercial vehicles. This is why, in 2010, the Japan LP Gas Association started an initiative to encourage corporations and motorists alike to switch to autogas vehicles. The initiative involves 27,000 Japanese retailers to introduce an autogas vehicle into their fleet every three years. Many of these corporations already have autogas vehicles, but Makoto Arahata from the Japanese LP Gas Association says that there is still much room for improvement.


title: Autogas

text: Lithuania is one of the countries with the highest rates of autogas use in Europe. Autogas is very popular in Lithuania and it is widely available. The distribution of most car brands are in the hands of the Polish distributors, therefore factory-installed LPG in brand-new cars are as common and widely available as they are in Poland.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas was introduced to Malta on 22 May 2012 by Liquigas. The first filling station is located at the Malta International Airport.


title: Autogas

text: Use of autogas has varied in the Netherlands. It went up in the 1980s and has decreased ever since, except for an increase in 2005. In 2010, there are around 220,000 autogas vehicles on the road (total cars being a little less than 8 million).


title: Autogas

text: Autogas is sold at most fuel stations, stations in urban areas may not supply it due to safety regulations with regard to LPG storage tanks. The 'Dutch Bayonet' is the standard filling device used.


title: Autogas

text: The road tax on autogas vehicles can be up to 2 times that of petrol powered vehicles. On the modern third generation (G3) autogas systems, the difference on tax is zero for cars up to 850 kg, but increases for heavier cars. The diesel tax is twice the petrol tax. Because the price of autogas is less than half that of petrol, fitting a car with an LPG system is only economically feasible at more than around 10,000 km/year.


title: Autogas

text: LPG has modest popularity in New Zealand among road users, and reached its peak during the period immediately following the oil crises of the 1970s. As part of his Think Big policies to encourage energy self-sufficiency, Rob Muldoon heavily subsidised the construction of LPG infrastructure during the late 1970s and early 1980s.


title: Autogas

text: LPG was allowed to be used as an automotive fuel in 2005 and first Autogas station became operative in 2010 located at Sialkot.


title: Autogas

text: Up until 2014 there were only four Autogas stations operating in Pakistan serving around 1000 vehicles. LPG failed to attract attention of the investors and customers due to extremely cheap prices of CNG as Pakistan had huge Natural Gas reserves. Pakistan in a decade became the largest consumer of CNG. This impacted Pakistan's reserves in a negative way and they receded in a quick span. In November 2013 Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority issued about 40 NoC's for setting up LPG Autogas stations mainly to PSO, a State owned Petroleum giant. However, in December 2013 Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) contrary to the rest of the world where LPG is promoted, declared LPG a risk to public safety thus banned LPG to be used in Public transport vehicles, thus closing the era of LPG in Pakistan even before it started.


title: Autogas

text: Poland has one of the oldest and most successful autogas markets in Europe. It is the country with the highest rate of LPG use per capita, higher even than Italy. In 2011, there were 6050 autogas refuelling stations and 2,500,000 autogas vehicles on the road. The number of autogas vehicles in Poland increased by 8% in 2011, however autogas sales decreased by 3.7%. This is mostly due to older vehicles being replaced with newer, more fuel efficient ones. Almost half of Poland's LPG comes from Russia. Most of the Polish distributors offer brand-new factory installed LPG cars of mostly all brands.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas is widely used in Russia. In its modern form it has been used since the 1970s, when high oil prices and difficulties in economically producing lightweight diesel engines motivated the CPSU to try autogas in light trucks and buses with carburetor engines. There are two types of autogas equipment and autogas stations as well: LPG (propane-butane mix) and compressed natural gas (CNG, methane). Natural gas is stored at a higher pressure than LPG (200 bar vs. 10 bar for LPG).


title: Autogas

text: The main consumer of LPG is commercial light-weight cargo transport (so as GAZelles in Russia are mostly LPG-powered). There are some community supported sources where people post gas station locations on the map. These sources may be used by some travelers going to Russia by car. First limited series of vehicles driven by multi-fuel including methane has appeared in the middle of the 20th century.


title: Autogas

text: , the number of autogas vehicles in Russia is actively growing. Some are built in the factory to use autogas and some are retrofitted existing vehicles. The average cost of a litre of petrol and diesel fuel in Russia is about per litre. The cost of a litre of LPG is from to , while fuel consumption is almost the same. In 2022, LPG prices fell down since January to per litre, or even till in some regions.


title: Autogas

text: There are a number of incentives also provided for owners to convert their cars to use autogas. There is also a huge disparity in the rate of development of methane and propane gas stations. The owners of gas vehicles themselves are very fond of their cars for the low cost of operation, but often complain about the inconvenience of placing cylinders in the cabin, as well as the fact that if for example the old "Volga" costs about 30,000 rubles, then its gasification can cost twice as much. But gasification of new cars as already mentioned in the article is possible directly from the factory or by official dealers of car brands.


title: Autogas

text: CNG is more commonly used for commercial passenger transport (taxis, city buses). Although the Russian government subsidizes conversion of petrol-powered vehicles to CNG by reimbursement of the majority of its price (CNG equipment costs twice more as LPG), it is not popular among private car owners because CNG tanks are much larger than LPG tanks and CNG stations are not common (LPG stations are as common as petrol and diesel stations).


title: Autogas

text: Serbia has a well-developed autogas market. Many petrol-powered vehicles from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, both locally made cars such as Yugos and imports from Western Europe, have been converted to LPG. Autogas systems used in Serbia are mostly from Italian companies like Lovato and Tartarini. As of August 2014, LPG is approximately 40% cheaper per litre than petrol. It is available at petrol stations in the cities and along major routes, as well as some dedicated stations.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas (called GLP in Spain) was restricted by law to taxis and public transport buses for many decades. In recent years the market has been liberalised and autogas has been made available to all kinds of vehicles. The Spanish government subsidises the installations of autogas in cars and the purchase of brand-new factory-installed autogas cars. There are many factory-installed autogas brand-new cars available for purchase. While the number of autogas-powered cars is increasing every year, it is still low. The main barrier for a major expansion of the number of autogas-powered cars is that the number of refuelling stations for autogas is also still low, but it is increasing quickly too. By the end of 2015 there were 342 stations selling autogas in Spain. Spain is currently the only country using the new EU-wide common standard connector for autogas, the Euroconnector or Euronozzle adapter. The Euronozzle adapter was supposed to replace the current three different LPG filling systems (ACME, Bajonet and Dish) in Europe, but that would be expensive, so investments in such a change-over have not started yet. Before Euronozzle, Spain used a form of Bajonet. Spain's neighbouring countries France and Portugal continue to use Dish adapters for filling vehicles up with LPG.


title: Autogas

text: Thailand has for over 15 years run LPG taxi cabs in Bangkok, though autos and buses had erroneously labelled NGV stickers when in fact, they were LPG. A low cost local modification industry had sprung up in Thailand, with costs of conversion as low as , as well as strong local knowhow to avoid its major safety issues. By 2008, half of all taxicabs had switched from gasoline to LPG by low cost local modification. Despite a government push, the number of LPG vehicles continues to grow and outpace NGVs. The number of autogas vehicles has continues to see high growth, despite a push for operators to switch to NGV (CNG), there has been considerable resistance due to inherent costs. As of January 2013, Thailand has 1,014,000 LPG fueled vehicles, and consumed 606,000 tonnes in 2012 of LPG, while 483 stations serve some 380,000 CNG vehicles.


title: Autogas

text: Turkey has the highest percentage of autogas vehicles in the world. Some 37% of passenger cars run on autogas, and autogas consumption now exceeds petrol consumption. The Turkish government regulated the autogas price to provide consumers with a net economic advantage of 20–35%. As of the end of 2010, there are 8,500 autogas fueling stations around the country and market growth has been supported by a network of 1,000 licensed conversion shops.


title: Autogas

text: According to the Turkish Statistics Institute's report, the nation had over 16,500,000 vehicles in January 2012. 50.3% are passenger vehicles. 16.2% light weight trucks, 15.7% motorcycles, 9.2% tractors, 4.6% heavy weight trucks, 2.5% mini buses for transportation, 1.4% buses and 0.1% special purpose vehicles.


title: Autogas

text: LPG is dominantly used in Turkey as an autogas while there are only around 500 CNG fueled cars and there are only two CNG filling stations.


title: Autogas

text: In Turkey, Diesel vehicles are usually not converted to LPG because of unsuccessful applications in the past. For that reason, installations are often not made to light and heavy weight trucks, tractors, bus and mini-buses and motorcycles, because the owners of conversion workshops are fearful of the risks.


title: Autogas

text: 8.3 million LPG cars are passenger vehicles. 33% of the passenger cars (2,739,000) are diesel powered and 67% are petrol powered (5,561,000). As there is no conversion to diesel cars, among 5,561,000 petrol powered passenger cars, According to the reports of the MMO, (Chamber of Mechanical Engineers, authorized to check emissions and licenses) there were 3.1 million LPG fueled vehicles by the end of the year 2011.


title: Autogas

text: The converted vehicles were mostly carburated engines. Nearly 90% of the old carburated engines have already been converted and day by day, new generation vehicle owners are also choosing LPG as an alternative fuel.


title: Autogas

text: The reason of this high LPG application is because of the Turkish government's application of high taxes upon petrol and diesel prices, and because of these taxes, Turkey finds itself using the second most expensive petrol in the world (after Norway) even though Turkey has borders with OPEC countries exporting crude oil and petroleum to the world and has the lowest transportation costs. Turkish people found the only solution to save money from their road expenses by converting their cars to autogas which gives them an advantage of 35% to 40% savings.


title: Autogas

text: This big conversion is the success of Turkish autogas kits and autogas tanks manufacturers starting from 1995, even though autogas use became legal in 2000. At the same time, Italian companies also supplied systems through several companies.


title: Autogas

text: Ukraine has a well-developed autogas market. Many petrol-powered vehicles from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, both locally made cars such as ZAZ and imports from Western Europe, have been converted to LPG. One may also buy a factory-prepared LPG car. As of August 2017, LPG is approximately 2 times cheaper per litre than petrol. It is widely available at petrol stations in the cities and along major routes, as well as some dedicated stations.


title: Autogas

text: According to the LPG trade association in the UK there are about 1500 refuelling stations that cater for the 160,000 LPG powered vehicles on UK roads. This represents less than 1% of vehicles.


title: Autogas

text: The only Government incentive to use LPG is the lower road fuel tax applied to LPG compared to petrol. As of January 2012, the saving of about 60 pence per litre is the highest it has ever been and that combined with conversion prices being an historic low should result in an increase in LPG conversions.


title: Autogas

text: Technology has reached the point where almost all conversions are 'Sequential Vapour Injection', and in the UK there is a large number of kits with various price and quality ranges to choose from, resulting in a very competitive market.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas is on the rise in the United States. As of February 2012, the United States has more than 147,000 autogas vehicles on the road, accounting for just 2% of the world's total and as of June 2013, the United States has 2,843 autogas fueling stations, making it easier for drivers to refuel across the country. The U.S. Department of Energy has a website that autogas drivers can easily locate autogas fueling stations near them as well as other alternative fuels. The cost of converting a car to use petrol or autogas at a turn of a knob starts from . Autogas use by car drivers can help the United States to reduce dependence on foreign oil as 90% of all U.S. Autogas is produced in the U.S.


title: Autogas

text: In 2005, a provision was enacted that placed a 50-cent per gallon tax credit on propane autogas as part of H.R. 4853, making it $1 per gallon cheaper than petrol on average. The alternative fuel credit was extended in 2010 and remained in effect until the end of 2011.


title: Autogas

text: Autogas for America claims to be the unified voice of the autogas industry in the United States. Composed of autogas experts, transportation industry specialists and environmental advocates, Autogas for America says it "leverages industry cooperation to widen recognition of autogas among the US public, media and government."


title: Autogas

text: The Alternative Fuel Association of America based in New York is the largest association of its kind; it give incentives of up to $4,000 to the owners of fleets who retrofit their vehicle to autogas; the Association works closely with CNG and LPG Max of America, one of the pioneer companies in the LPG and CNG conversions in America.


title: Autogas

text: Piston-powered small aircraft that use autogas require a Supplemental Type Certificate issued by the United States Federal Aviation Administration.


title: Autogas

text: The different autogas systems generally use the same type of filler, tanks, lines and fittings but use different components in the engine bay. Liquid injection systems use special tanks with circulation pumps and return lines similar to petrol fuel injection systems.


title: Autogas

text: There are three basic types of autogas system. The oldest of these is the conventional "converter-and-mixer" system, which has existed since the 1940s and is still widely used today. The other two types are known as "injection" systems, but there are significant differences between the two.


title: Autogas

text: A converter-mixer system uses a converter to change liquid fuel from the tank into vapour, then feeds that vapour to the mixer where it is mixed with the intake air. This is also known as a venturi system or "single point" system.


title: Autogas

text: Vapour phase injection systems also use a converter, but unlike the mixer system, the gas exits the converter at a regulated pressure. The gas is then injected into the air intake manifold via a series of electrically controlled injectors. The injector opening times are controlled by the autogas control unit. This unit works in much the same way as a petrol fuel injection control unit. This allows much more accurate metering of fuel to the engine than is possible with mixers, improving economy and/or power while reducing emissions.


title: Autogas

text: Liquid phase injection systems do not use a converter, but instead deliver the liquid fuel into a "fuel rail" in much the same manner as a petrol injection system. These systems are still very much in their infancy. Because the fuel vaporises in the intake, the air around it is cooled significantly. This increases the density of the intake air and can potentially lead to substantial increases in engine power output, to the extent that such systems are usually "de-tuned" to avoid damaging other parts of the engine. Liquid phase injection has the potential to achieve much better economy and power plus lower emission levels than are possible using mixers or vapour phase injectors.


title: Autogas

text: The fuel is transferred into a vehicle tank as liquid by connecting the bowser at the filling station to the "filler" fitting on the vehicle.


title: Autogas

text: The type of filler used varies from country to country, and in some cases different types are used within the same country.


title: Autogas

text: Adaptors that allow a vehicle fitted with a particular system to refuel at a station equipped with another system are available.


title: Autogas

text: The fill valve contains a check valve so that the liquid in the line between the filler and the tank(s) does not escape when the bowser nozzle is disconnected.


title: Autogas

text: In installations where more than one tank is fitted, T-fittings may be used to connect the tanks to one filler so that the tanks are filled simultaneously. In some applications, more than one filler may be fitted, such as on opposite sides of the vehicle. These may be connected to separate tanks, or may be connected to the same tanks using T-fittings in the same manner as for connecting multiple tanks to one filler.


title: Autogas

text: Fillers are typically made of brass to avoid the possibility of sparks when attaching or removing the bowser that might occur if steel fittings were used.


title: Autogas

text: The hose between the filler and tank(s) is called the "fill hose" or "fill line". The hose or pipe between the tank(s) and the converter is called the "service line". These both carry liquid under pressure.


title: Autogas

text: The flexible hose between the converter and mixer is called the "vapour hose" or "vapour line". This line carries vapour at low pressure and has a much larger diameter to suit.


title: Autogas

text: Where the tank valves are located inside an enclosed space such as the boot of a sedan, a plastic "containment" hose is used to provide a gas-tight seal between the gas components and the inside of the vehicle.


title: Autogas

text: Liquid hoses for LPG are specifically designed and rated for the pressures that exist in LPG systems, and are made from materials designed to be compatible with the fuel. Some hoses are made with crimped fittings, while others are made using "re-usable" fittings that are pressed or screwed onto the end of the hose.


title: Autogas

text: Rigid sections of liquid line are usually made using copper tubing, although in some applications, steel pipes are used instead. The ends of the pipes are always double-flared and fitted with flare nuts to secure them to the fittings.


title: Autogas

text: Liquid line fittings are mostly made from brass. The fittings typically adapt from a thread in a component, such as a BSP or NPT threaded hole on a tank, to an SAE flare fitting to suit the ends of pipes or hoses.


title: Autogas

text: Vehicles are often fitted with only one tank, but multiple tanks are used in a some applications. In passenger car applications, the tank is typically either a cylindrical tank, made from steel, mounted in the boot of the vehicle or a toroidal tank (also steel) or set of permanently interconnected cylinders placed in the spare wheel well. In commercial vehicle applications, the tanks are generally cylindrical tanks mounted either in the cargo space or on the chassis underneath the body. Increasingly, the tank is an aluminium Conformable Tank, which is lighter, has more capacity and cannot rust.


title: Autogas

text: The tanks have fittings for filling, liquid outlet, emergency relief of excess pressure, fuel level gauge and sometimes a vapour outlet. These may be separate valves mounted into a series of 3 to 5 holes in a plate welded into the tank shell, or may be assembled onto a "multi-valve" unit which is bolted into one large hole on a boss welded, or in the case of an aluminium tank, extruded as part of the tank shell.


title: Autogas

text: Modern fill valves are usually fitted with an "automatic fill limiter" (AFL) to prevent overfilling. The AFL has a float arm which restricts the flow significantly but does not shut it off entirely. This is intended to cause the pressure in the line to rise enough to tell the bowser to stop pumping but not cause dangerously high pressures. Before AFLs were introduced, it was common for the filler (with integral check valve) to be screwed directly into the tank, as the operator had to open an "ullage" valve at the tank while filling, allowing vapour out of the top of the tank and stopping filling when liquid started coming out of the ullage valve to indicate that the tank was full. Modern tanks are not fitted with ullage valves.


title: Autogas

text: The liquid outlet is usually used to supply fuel to the engine, and is usually referred to as the "service valve". Modern service valves incorporate an electric shut-off solenoid. In applications using very small engines such as small generators, vapour may be withdrawn from the top of the tank instead of liquid from the bottom of the tank.


title: Autogas

text: The emergency pressure relief valve in the tank is called a hydrostatic pressure relief valve. It is designed to open if the pressure in the tank is dangerously high, thus releasing some vapour to the atmosphere to reduce the pressure in the tank. The release of a small quantity of vapour reduces the pressure in the tank, which causes some of the liquid in the tank to vaporise to re-establish equilibrium between liquid and vapour. The "latent heat of vaporisation" causes the tank to cool, which reduces pressure even further.


title: Autogas

text: The gauge sender is usually a magnetically coupled arrangement, with a float arm inside the tank rotating a magnet, which rotates an external gauge. The external gauge is usually readable directly, and most also incorporate an electronic sender to operate a fuel gauge on the dashboard.


title: Autogas

text: There are a number of types of valve used in autogas systems. The most common ones are "shut-off" or "filter-lock" valves, which are used to stop flow in the service line. These may be operated by vacuum or electricity. On bi-fuel systems with a petrol carburettor, a similar shut-off valve is usually fitted in the petrol line between the pump and carburettor.


title: Autogas

text: Check valves are fitted in the filler and on the fill input to the fuel tank to prevent fuel flowing back the wrong way.


title: Autogas

text: Service valves are fitted to the outlet from the tank to the service line. These have a tap to turn the fuel on and off. The tap is usually only closed when the tank is being worked on. In some countries, an electrical shut-off valve is built into the service valve.


title: Autogas

text: Where multiple tanks are fitted, a combination of check valves and a hydrostatic relief valve are usually installed to prevent fuel from flowing from one tank to another. In Australia, there is a common assembly designed for this purpose. It is a combined twin check valve and hydrostatic relief valve assembly built in the form of a T-fitting, such that the lines from the tanks come into the sides of the valve and the outlet to the converter comes out the end. Because there is only one common brand of these valves, they are known colloquially as a "Sherwood valve".


title: Autogas

text: The converter (also known as vaporiser or reducer) is a device designed to change the fuel from a pressurised liquid to a vapour at around atmospheric pressure for delivery to the mixer or vapour phase injectors. Because of the refrigerant characteristic of the fuel, heat must be put into the fuel by the converter. This is usually achieved by having engine coolant circulated through a heat exchanger that transfers heat from that coolant to the LPG.


title: Autogas

text: There are two distinctly different basic types of converter for use with mixer type systems. The "European" style of converter is a more complex device that incorporates an idle circuit and is designed to be used with a simple fixed venturi mixer. The "American" style of converter is a simpler design which is intended to be used with a variable venturi mixer that incorporates an idle circuit.


title: Autogas

text: Engines with a low power output such as; scooters, quad bikes and generators can use a simpler type of converter (also known as governor or regulator). These converters are fed with fuel in vapour form.


title: Autogas

text: Evaporation takes place in the tank where refrigeration occurs as the liquid fuel boils. The tanks large surface area exposed to the ambient air temperature combined with the low power output (fuel requirement) of the engine make this type of system viable. The refrigeration of the fuel tank is proportional to fuel demand hence this arrangement is only used on smaller engines.


title: Autogas

text: This type of converter can either be fed with vapour at tank pressure (called a 2-stage regulator) or be fed via a tank mounted regulator at a fixed reduced pressure (called a single stage regulator).


title: Autogas

text: The mixer is the device that mixes the fuel into the air flowing to the engine. The mixer incorporates a venturi designed to draw the fuel into the airflow due to the movement of the air.


title: Autogas

text: Mixer type systems have existed since the 1940s and some designs have changed little over that time. Mixers are now being increasingly superseded by injectors.


title: Autogas

text: Most vapour phase injection systems mount the solenoids in a manifold block or "injector rail", then run hoses to the nozzles, which are screwed into holes drilled and tapped into the runners of the intake manifold. There is usually one nozzle for each cylinder. Some vapour injection systems resemble petrol injection, having separate injectors that fit into the manifold or head in the same manner as petrol injectors, and are fed fuel through a "fuel rail".


title: Autogas

text: Liquid phase injectors are mounted onto the engine in a manner similar to petrol injectors, being mounted directly at the inlet manifold and fed liquid fuel from a fuel rail.


title: Autogas

text: There are four distinct electrical systems that may be used in autogas systems – fuel gauge sender, fuel shut-off, closed loop feedback mixture control and injection control.


title: Autogas

text: In some installations, the fuel gauge sender fitted to the autogas tank is matched to the original fuel gauge in the vehicle. In others, an additional gauge is added to display the level of fuel in the autogas tank separately from the existing petrol gauge.


title: Autogas

text: In most modern installations, an electronic device called a "tachometric relay" or "safety switch" is used to operate electrical shut-off solenoids. These work by sensing that the engine is running by detecting ignition pulses. Some systems use an engine oil pressure sensor instead. In all installations, there is a filterlock (consisting of a filter assembly and a vacuum or electric solenoid operated shut-off valve) located at the input to the converter. In "European" converters, there is also a solenoid in the converter to shut off the idle circuit. These valves are usually both connected to the output of the tachometric relay or oil pressure switch. Where solenoids are fitted to the outputs of fuel tanks, these are also connected to the output of the tachometric relay or oil pressure switch. In installations with multiple tanks, a switch or "changeover" relay may be fitted to allow the driver to select which tank to use fuel from. On bi-fuel, the switch used to change between fuels is used to turn off the tachometric relay.


title: Autogas

text: Closed loop feedback systems use an electronic controller that operates in much the same way as in a petrol fuel injection systems, using an oxygen sensor to effectively measure the air/fuel mixture by measuring the oxygen content of the exhaust and control valve on the converter or in the vapour line to adjust the mixture. Mixer type systems that do not have a closed loop feedback fitted are sometimes referred to as "open loop" systems.


title: Autogas

text: Injection systems use a computerised control system which is very similar to that used in petrol injection systems. In virtually all systems, the injection control system integrates the tachometric relay and closed loop feedback functions.


title: Autogas

text: Many LPG equipment installers recommend the installation of so-called valve protection systems. These can consist in the most simple case of a bottle containing valve protection liquid. The liquid is drawn into the air intake system and distributed into the engines' cylinders along with the fuel and air.


title: Autogas

text: More sophisticated systems can consist of a piggyback ECU that is synchronised with the LPG injector ECU. This results in a more precise injection of valve protection fluid.


title: Autogas

text: The designs of converters and mixers are matched to each other by matching sizes and shapes of components within the two.


title: Autogas

text: In most areas of the world the word "converter" is not commonly used. 'Regulator' or 'reducer' or 'vaporizer' are more popular.


title: Autogas

text: In European style systems, the size and shape of the venturi of the carburettor is designed to match the converter. In USA style systems, the air valve and metering pins in the mixer are sized to match the diaphragm size and spring stiffness in the converter. In both cases, the components are matched by the manufacturers and only basic adjustments are needed during installation and tuning.


title: Autogas

text: An autogas carburettor may simply consist of a throttlebody and a mixer, sometimes fitted together using an adapter, the venturi is not needed.


title: Autogas

text: Cold start enrichment is achieved by the fact that the engine coolant is cold when the engine is cold. This causes denser vapour to be delivered to the mixer. As the engine warms up, the coolant temperature rises until the engine is at operating temperature and the mixture has leaned off to the normal running mixture. Depending on the system, the throttle may need to be held open further when the engine is cold in the same manner as with a petrol carburettor. On others, the normal mixture is intended to be somewhat lean and no cold-start throttle increase is needed. Because of the way enrichment is achieved, no additional "choke" butterfly is required for cold starting with LPG. Some evaporators have an electric choke valve, energising this valve, before starting the engine, will spray some LPG vapour into the carburetor to help cold start.


title: Autogas

text: The temperature of the engine is critical to the tuning of an autogas system. The engine thermostat effectively controls the temperature of the converter, thus directly affecting the mixture. A faulty thermostat, or a thermostat of the wrong temperature range for the design of the system may not operate correctly.


title: Autogas

text: The power output capacity of a system is limited by the ability of the converter to deliver a stable flow of vapour. A coolant temperature lower than intended will reduce the maximum power output possible, as will an air bubble trapped in the cooling circuit or complete loss of coolant. All converters have a limit, beyond which mixtures become unstable. Unstable mixtures typically contain tiny droplets of liquid fuel that were not heated enough in the converter and will vaporise in the mixer or intake to form an excessively rich mixture. When this occurs, the mixture will become so rich that the engine will flood and stall. Because the outside of the converter will be at or below 0 °C when this happens, water vapour from the air will freeze onto the outside of the converter, forming an icy white layer. Some converters are very susceptible to cracking when this happens.


title: Autogas

text: LPG may be used for a supplemental fuel for diesels of all sizes. Diesel contains 128,700 BTU per US gallon, where propane contains 91,690 BTU per US gallon. If LPG is 30–40% less expensive, there may very well be a saving. Any actual savings are dependent on the relative cost of diesel versus LPG. In Australia, where diesel costs substantially more than LPG, savings of 10 to 20% are claimed.


title: Autogas

text: The above systems add small quantities of LPG with the primary aim of improving economy, but much larger quantities of LPG can be injected in order to increase power. Even at full output a diesel engine runs about 50% lean of stoichiometric to avoid black smoke production, so there is a substantial amount of oxygen in the intake charge which is not consumed in the combustion process. This oxygen is therefore available for the combustion of a substantial addition of LPG resulting in a large increase in power output.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Akwaeke Emezi is a Nigerian fiction writer and video artist, best known for their novels "Freshwater", " Pet," and their "New York Times" bestselling novel "The Death of Vivek Oji". Emezi is a generalist who writes speculative fiction, romance, memoir and poetry for both young adults and adults with mostly LGBT themes. Their work has earned them several awards and nominations including the Otherwise Award and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2021, "Time" featured them as a Next Generation Leader.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Akwaeke Emezi was born in Umuahia in 1987 to an Igbo Nigerian father, and a mother who was the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants living in Malaysia. Emezi grew up in Aba. Emezi started reading fantasy books and with their sister Yagazie used storytelling to escape the riots, dictatorship, and dangerous reality of their childhoods. Emezi was a "voracious" reader during childhood and they began writing short stories when they were five years old.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Emezi relocated to Appalachia, United States when they were 16 years old to attend college. After college, they enrolled in a veterinary school and dropped out before receiving their MPA in international public policy and nonprofit management from New York University. Emezi briefly started a short lived anonymous sex blog and a natural-hair blog which gave them little recognition. In 2014, they entered the MFA creative fiction writing program at Syracuse where they started the draft of their debut novel "Freshwater" after which they attended a Nigerian writing workshop in Lagos.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Emezi's debut novel "Freshwater" tells the semi-autobiographical story of the protagonist, Ada, who is an ogbanje (an Igbo evil spirit). Emezi explores their Igbo heritage's spirituality and gender alongside those of Western construction and invites their audience to think critically about this spirit/body binary.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: "Freshwater" received significant critical acclaim and was longlisted for numerous prestigious awards. Emezi was also recognized as a 2018 National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: In 2019, "Freshwater" was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction—the first time a non-binary transgender author has been nominated for the prize. Women's prize judge Professor Kate Williams said that the panel did not know Emezi was non-binary when the book was chosen, but she said Emezi was happy to be nominated. Non-binary commentator Vic Parsons wrote that the nomination raised uncomfortable questions, asking: "would a non-binary author who was assigned male at birth have been longlisted? I highly doubt it." After the nomination, it was announced that the Women's Prize Trust was working on new guidelines for transgender, non-binary, and genderfluid authors. The Women's Prize later asked for Emezi's "sex as defined by law" when submitting "The Death of Vivek Oji" for inclusion, and Emezi chose to withdraw, calling the requirement transphobic and specifically exclusionary to trans women.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Emezi's second novel and first young adult novel "Pet", released on 10 September 2019, is about a transgender teenager named Jam living in a world where adults refuse to acknowledge the existence of monsters. A prequel Bitter, was released in February 2022.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Emezi signed a two-book deal with Riverhead Books. The first, "The Death of Vivek Oji", came out on 4 August 2020 and was a "New York Times" best seller. The second is a memoir entitled "".


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: In April 2021, "Deadline Hollywood" announced that Amazon Studios won the right to adapt their debut romance novel "You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty" into a feature film. It was purchased in a high six figure deal which "Deadline" called the biggest book deal of the year so far. Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society will develop it alongside Elizabeth Raposo. Emezi will serve as the executive producer.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Emezi will write and executive produce the TV series adaptation of their novel "Freshwater" for FX alongside Tamara P. Carter. It will be produced by FX Productions with Kevin Wandell and Lindsey Donahue.


title: Akwaeke Emezi

text: Emezi identifies as non-binary transgender. They use the pronouns they/them/theirs. They experience multiplicity and consider themself an ogbanje. They experienced their first personality split when they were 16, a week after moving to the United States. They have written about their experience of undergoing gender confirmation surgery.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Cries and Whispers () is a 1972 Swedish period drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann. The film, set in a mansion at the end of the 19th century, is about three sisters and a servant who struggle with the terminal cancer of one of the sisters (Andersson). The servant (Sylwan) is close to her, while the other two sisters (Ullmann and Thulin) confront their emotional distance from each other.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Inspired by Bergman's mother, Karin Åkerblom, and his vision of four women in a red room, "Cries and Whispers" was filmed at Taxinge-Näsby Castle in 1971. Its themes include faith, the female psyche and the search for meaning in suffering, and academics have found Biblical allusions. Unlike previous Bergman films, it uses saturated colour, crimson in particular.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: After its premiere in the United States, distributed by Roger Corman and New World Pictures, the film was released in Sweden and screened out of competition at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Following two unsuccessful films by Bergman, "Cries and Whispers" was a critical and commercial success. It received five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture (rare for a foreign-language film). Cinematographer Sven Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and "Cries and Whispers" won the Guldbagge Award for Best Film and other honours.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The film inspired stage adaptations by Ivo van Hove and Andrei Șerban and influenced later cinema. It was commemorated on Swedish postage stamps referring to a scene in which Andersson and Sylwan replicate the "Pietà".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: In a large 19th-century mansion with red walls and carpets, Agnes is dying of uterine cancer. Her sisters, Maria and Karin, arrive at their childhood home and take turns with the maid, Anna, watching over Agnes. Anna, more religious than the sisters, prays after she lost her young daughter. When Agnes' doctor David visits, he sees his former lover Maria. Maria remembers their affair and her failed marriage with her husband Joakim, who stabbed himself non-fatally in response to the adultery. David tells her that she has become more indifferent. Agnes remembers their mother, who neglected and teased her and favoured Maria, with greater understanding and recalls sharing a moment of sorrow with her. While Agnes' sisters remain emotionally distant, Anna comforts the suffering Agnes by baring her breasts and holding her at night.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Agnes dies after a long period of suffering, and at her wake the priest says that her faith was stronger than his own. Maria tells Karin that it is unusual for them to avoid touching each other or having a deep conversation. She tries to touch Karin, who recoils at the gesture. Karin recalls an earlier occasion at the mansion, where, struggling with self-harm, she mutilated her genitals with a piece of broken glass to repel her husband Fredrik. Karin later dines with Maria, saying that Anna was devoted to Agnes and probably deserves a memento. She says she resents Anna's seeming familiarity with her and Maria, speaks of her own suicidal tendencies, and confesses her hatred of Maria and her flirtatiousness and shallow smiles. The sisters reconcile after the argument, touching each other.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: In a dream sequence, Agnes briefly returns to life and asks Karin and then Maria to approach her. Karin, repelled by the invitation, says that she still has life and does not love Agnes enough to join her. Maria approaches the undead Agnes but flees in terror when she grabs her, saying that she cannot leave her husband and children. Anna re-enters the room and takes Agnes back to bed, where she cradles the dead Agnes in her arms.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The family decides to send Anna away at the end of the month, with Fredrik refusing to award her with any additional severance pay, and the maid rejects her promised memento. Maria returns to Joakim, and Karin cannot believe Maria's claim that she does not remember their touch. Anna finds Agnes' diary with an account of a visit with Maria, Karin and Anna, with a shared, nostalgic moment on a swing. Agnes wrote that "come what may, this is happiness."


title: Cries and Whispers

text: According to Bergman, he conceived the story during a lonely, unhappy time on Fårö when he wrote constantly. He described a recurring dream of four women in white clothing in a red room, whispering to each other. He said that this symbolised his childhood view of the soul as a faceless person who was black on the outside, representing shame, and red on the inside. The persistence of the vision indicated to Bergman that it could be a film, he said, and he planned a "portrait of my mother ... the great beloved of my childhood". Karin has the same name as Bergman's mother, but all four female protagonists are intended to represent aspects of her personality.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Since Bergman's films were difficult to market, foreign capital was unavailable to finance the film. He decided to shoot "Cries and Whispers" in Swedish rather than English (as his previous film, "The Touch", had been) and finance it through his production company, Cinematograph. Although he used 750,000 SEK of his savings and borrowed 200,000 SEK, he also asked the Swedish Film Institute for help with the film's 1.5-million SEK budget. This attracted some criticism, since Bergman was not an up-and-coming director in the greatest need of subsidy. To save money, the main actresses and Nykvist returned their salaries as loans and were nominal co-producers.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: 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". In an essay included with the DVD, critic Peter Cowie quoted the director: "All of my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except "Cries and Whispers"".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: When Bergman wrote the screenplay, he intended from the start to cast Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. He explained his choice of Harriet Andersson of Agnes: "I would very much like to have Harriet, too, since she belongs to this breed of enigmatic women". Andersson had not worked with Bergman for years, and he sent her notes rather than a complete screenplay. Ullmann described receiving a 50-page "personal letter" from Bergman describing the story which began, "Dear Friends: We're now going to make a film together. It is a sort of a vision that I have and I will try to describe it". Andersson did not receive a backstory about Agnes; Agnes' sisters were married with children, but Andersson was uncertain whether Agnes had ever married or became ill at an early age and lived with her mother.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Bergman and Ullmann had a previous romantic relationship, and their daughter Linn Ullmann appears as both Maria's daughter and Anna's daughter in the picture. Another of Bergman's daughters, Lena, also appears as young Maria.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The director initially said that he hoped Mia Farrow would be in the film: "Let's see if that works out. It probably will; why shouldn't it?" However, Farrow was never cast. Kari Sylwan, a novice in Bergman's films, had what would have been Farrow's role.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Few of Bergman's previous films were shot in colour. Red was particularly sensitive, and cinematographer Sven Nykvist made many photography tests to capture balanced combinations of reds, whites and skin colours. To the disappointment of Swedish Film Institute members, Bergman refused to shoot in their new, expensive studios and filmed on location at Taxinge-Näsby Castle. Since the mansion's interior was dilapidated, the crew was free to paint and decorate as they saw fit.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Principal photography took place from 9 September to 30 October 1971. Nykvist used Eastmancolor film, which reduced graininess and would be the most sensitive to colours. The final, outdoor swing scene was shot early in production so the filmmakers could have sunlight before the darker season set in. Ullmann said that every scene was shot in natural light, using large windows for indoor scenes.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Andersson described the on-set mood as light, an antidote to the film's heavy subject matter. She said that although she usually read the screenplay and went to bed early during a production, the filmmakers kept her awake late to enhance her tired, ill appearance. The actress modeled her death scene on the death of her father, and Bergman directed her deep, violent inhalations.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Previous Bergman films had focused on the apparent absence of God, but scholar Julian C. Rice quoted Bergman as saying that he had moved beyond that theme. Rice wrote that "Cries and Whispers", following "The Silence" (1963) and "Persona" (1966), was based more on psychology and individuation. Academic Eva Rueschmann said that psychoanalysis was an obvious tool with which to study the film, given the subconscious links between its characters.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Professor Egil Törnqvist examined the film's title. The young Maria whispers to her mother, and Karin and Maria whisper to each other as they bond. According to Törnqvist, "The cries relate to the opposite emotions: anguish, impotence, loneliness". Professor Emma Wilson described the family's predicament, with Karin feeling endangered by touch and Maria seeking an "erotic" touch. However, Maria is repelled by Agnes' decay and her dead body. Rueschmann explained Karin's repulsion to touch as a result of her degree of isolation and restraint. The scene where Anna cradles Agnes suggests that touch and sensation are soothing, despite the "opaque" question of their relationship, which may be comparable to sisterhood.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The magic lantern show the sisters enjoy is "Hansel and Gretel", which reveals Agnes' feelings of abandonment and her mother's favouring of Maria; according to Rueschmann, the Brothers Grimm story of sibling unity contrasts the sisters' estrangement. Cinema historian P. Adams Sitney wrote that Hansel and Gretel's parents abandoned them in the forest (symbolism), and Agnes' cancer is the equivalent of the witch in the Brothers Grimm tale. Karin's cutting of her vulva means that her husband will not have sex with her, and the red wine symbolises blood from the womb. Törnqvist wrote that Karin's transfer of blood from her vulva to her mouth means that she will neither have sex nor speak, and preventing communication reinforces loneliness. Sitney wrote that the family is most united when reading Charles Dickens' "The Pickwick Papers", which describes "male solidarity and chicanery, threatened by female plots for marriage". According to Frank Gado, detachment returns after Agnes' funeral. Anna is dismissed without warmth or sympathy, and the men deny her monetary rewards despite years of service. Maria also rejects "sentimental appeals" from Karin.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Film scholar Marc Gervais wrote that "Cries and Whispers" has no definitive solution of whether suffering and death have any meaning, citing the pastor who expresses his own doubts and fears when he eulogises Agnes. Gervais likened this to the protagonist of Bergman's earlier "Winter Light", Bergman's own conflicted feelings and his relationship to his father, Erik, a minister of the Church of Sweden. According to Gervais, the ending presents Bergman's solution: a touch, on certain occasions, can make life worthwhile. Törnqvist compared the ending to that of Bergman's 1957 "Wild Strawberries"; it "points to the past, to a paradisaic existence in "this" life, to the communion inherent in childhood that has later been lost".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Critic Marco Lanzagorta wrote, "Undeniably, "Cries and Whispers" is a film about the world of women, and is very open in terms of the gender and sexual politics that it portrays". The story fits Bergman's motif of "warring women", seen earlier in "The Silence" and "Persona" and later in "Autumn Sonata" (1978). The film inspired essays about Bergman's view of women. Patricia Erens wrote, "Bergman's women in such films as "Persona" and "Cries and Whispers" are not simply objects of abuse, but creatures through whom Bergman can express his own subjective fears, his many frustrations and failures at preserving autonomy of self and control of reality".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Feminists critiqued the film. In "Film Quarterly", Joan Mellen acknowledged that Bergman used his female characters as mouthpieces and his women signify "the dilemma of alienated, suffering human beings". In Bergman's films, women and men fail to find answers to their dilemmas; according to Mellen, the men are unanswered or cannot care for anyone but themselves. However, she wrote that Bergman's women fail because of their biology and an inability to move past their sexuality: "Bergman insists that because of their physiology, women are trapped in dry and empty lives within which they wither as the lines begin to appear on their faces". Critic Molly Haskell assigned "Cries and Whispers" to Bergman's later filmography, which differed from his earlier works in their view of women. Women in his early films lived in harmony with each other and had more-complete lives; Bergman used the women in "Cries and Whispers" and his later films as "projections of his soul", revealing his "sexual vanity". According to Haskell, Bergman attacked his female characters for the attributes he gave them: Karin's repression and Maria's sexuality.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Academic Laura Hubner agreed with "CineAction" essayist Varda Burstyn's view that "Cries and Whispers" depicts the suppression of women, but it does not endorse the suppression and the film opposes patriarchy. Rueschmann traced the emotional estrangement to the women's mother, who reacts to the era's gender roles with "boredom, anger and frustration". According to Rueschmann, her daughters assume (or reject) her position and harm themselves in the process. Agnes' confinement to bed may reflect gender roles and expectations for women about sex, childbirth and death. Author Birgitta Steene disputed what she called Mellen's Marxist feminist analysis, cross-referencing Bergman's realistic and metaphorical films to say that they are not the product of a sexist outlook.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Rueschmann quoted Bergman as saying his "ceaseless fascination with the whole race of women is one of [his] mainsprings. Obviously such an obsession implies ambivalence; it has something compulsive about it". However, he doubted that there was much difference between men and women: "I think that if I had made "Cries and Whispers" with four men in the leading roles, the story would have been largely the same".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Although Agnes' apparent resurrection may reflect Anna's fear (or desire), Emma Wilson wrote that it blurred the line between life and dream and might involve supernatural activity. Bergman explained the scene:


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Törnqvist advised against a literal reading of Agnes rising from the dead, relating it to the sisters' guilt.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: According to Sitney, the statue in the prologue may be Apollo or Orpheus. If the artistic, doomed Agnes matches Orpheus as well as Bergman, Agnes' mother may correspond to Eurydice (representing "the green world"). P. Adams Sitney concluded that "Cries and Whispers" tells of an "Orphic transformation of terror into art, of the loss of the mother into the musical richness of autumnal color".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The sisters' Aunt Olga uses the magic lantern to narrate "Hansel and Gretel", and Sitney connected this with "the gift of fairy tales—and thereby the psychic-defense machinery for exteriorising infantile and Oedipal terrors". In the folk tale "Cinderella", the wicked stepsisters' bleeding feet as a metaphor for menstruation is magnified by Karin's cutting of her vulva. Her laugh is reminiscent of the wicked witch in "Hansel and Gretel", as she reacts to the damage her sexuality has done.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Törnqvist, seeing that Anna prays for her dead daughter while eating an apple, wrote: "The eating of the apple links Anna, whose dead daughter was undoubtedly an illegitimate child, with the Eve of the Fall, with Original Sin". According to editor Raphael Shargel, Anna seems oblivious to the sacrilege of snacking immediately after worship and that her choice of food is the forbidden fruit.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Törnqvist wrote that Agnes' prolonged pain and death resemble the Passion of Jesus, and Wilson compared the position of Agnes' arms and legs to Jesus' body after his Passion. Gado also saw parallels to the crucifixion of Jesus and flashbacks to Good Friday and a mention of Twelfth Night at the end of the film (which he considered ironic, since Twelfth Night is associated with revelation). The magic-lantern show takes place on Twelfth Night. Sitney, Rueschmann, and Irving Singer described the scene where Anna cradles Agnes as reminiscent of "Pietà", with Lanzagorta specifying Michelangelo's "Pietà". According to academic Arthur Gibson, the "Pietà" rite becomes redemption: "Anna is holding in her arms the pain and loneliness and sin of the world caught up in the innocent Divine Sufferer".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: In 1972, "Variety" staff defined "Bergman's lean style" as including a "use of lingering close-ups, fades to red and a soundtrack echoing with the ticking of clocks, the rustle of dresses and the hushed cries of the lost". Critic Richard Brody called "Cries and Whispers" a period piece in which costumes are prominent. According to Gervais, Bergman had shed his previous austerity in favour of greater aesthetics.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Wilson noted the film's red rooms occupied by women in white, and the "azure, Edenic images of the start are gradually engulfed in crimson". Producer Bruce A. Block described its colour variety as minimal, with an emphasis on "extremely saturated red". According to Richard Armstrong, the Eastmancolor film added "a livid, slightly oneiric quality". Two rooms in the first scene (one where Maria is sleeping and the other being Agnes' room) are joined by the same colours, including "blood red" carpets and drapes and white pillows and nightdresses. Wilson observed that the film has fade-ins and fade-outs in saturated reds. Sitney analysed "Cries and Whispers" colour scheme, writing that there are moves from red with white to red with black to orange and ochre (in the final, autumnal outdoor scene). Blood, seen when Maria's husband injures himself and Karin cuts her vulva, echoes an earlier view of the mother character holding a red book against her dress. Sitney associates this with menstruation and castration.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Wilson described other uses of imagery: statues filling a garden, decorations, sunlight on a clock and a view of Maria revealing the "texture" of her hair. Images follow one another in the five-minute prologue with no spoken words. The close-ups of Maria in the initial scene are childlike. Agnes is seen with an open mouth and moist eyes, depicting her pain. Her memories of her mother are idealised, with the "flourishing greenery of the Edenic garden". Surveying the visuals and Bergman's depiction of social isolation and mourning, critics Christopher Heathcote and Jai Marshall found parallels in the paintings of Edvard Munch.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Johann Sebastian Bach's sarabande from Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor, performed by Pierre Fournier, is used in the film. Noting its use when the two sisters touch affectionately, critic Robin Wood wrote that it fit Bergman's use of Bach to signify "a possible transcendent wholeness". The score also contains Frédéric Chopin's Mazurka in A minor, Op.17/4, performed by Käbi Laretei. According to musicologist Alexis Luko, Bergman's use of the mazurka when Anna recalls her deceased daughter communicates "a sensory moment of reminiscence".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Sounds are used in other ways, with Anna's dead daughter apparently audible when Anna is near the cradle following Agnes' death. The prologue's bells and clocks are more audible than the natural sounds preceding them; Agnes' struggle to breathe soon joins the clocks' ticking, with editor Ken Dancyger finding "the continuity of time and life".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Every major film-distribution company rejected "Cries and Whispers", even when Bergman asked for an advance of only $75,000. Its U.S. rights were bought by Roger Corman's New World Pictures for $150,000, and Corman spent an additional $80,000 on marketing. According to the producer, the film made a profit of $1 million and was Bergman's biggest success in the U.S. Author Tino Balio reported a U.S. gross of $1.2 million from 803 theatres, and called it Bergman's best-performing film since "The Silence". To qualify for the 46th Academy Awards, distributors hurried to premiere "Cries and Whispers" in Los Angeles County (several months before its Swedish release). It premiered in New York City on 21 December 1972.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The film premiered at the Spegeln theatre in Stockholm on 5 March 1973. "Cries and Whispers" was later shown out of competition at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, where Bergman received a strong positive reaction from the audience.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: At the 61st Berlin International Film Festival in February 2011 (with Andersson in attendance), "Cries and Whispers" was screened in the Retrospective section. In 2015, The Criterion Collection released a 2K restoration on Blu-ray in Region A.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Before the film's release, estimations of Bergman were lowered by "The Rite" (1969) and "The Touch" (1971). In Sweden, "Svenska Dagbladet" critic Åke Janzon and "Dagens Nyheter" critic Hanserik Hjerten assessed "Cries and Whispers" as a poetically-rendered psychological study. Critic O. Foss wrote a less-positive review in "Fant", calling it "a rhapsody of petrified Bergman themes".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The film was generally praised in the United States. In "The New York Times", Vincent Canby called it a "magnificent, moving, and very mysterious new film". He included the film in his list of the "10 Best Films of 1972". Roger Ebert gave "Cries and Whispers" four stars (out of four) in his initial review: "We slip lower in our seats, feeling claustrophobia and sexual disquiet, realizing that we have been surrounded by the vision of a film maker who has absolute mastery of his art". and named it "the best film of 1972". "Variety" staff praised the direction for "a hypnotic impact". In "New York", Judith Crist called it "a work of genius— certainly the most complex, the most perceptive and the most humane of Bergman's works to date". François Truffaut made a theatrical comparison, saying that the film "begins like Chekhov's "Three Sisters" and ends like "The Cherry Orchard" and in between it's more like Strindberg".


title: Cries and Whispers

text: "Empire" critic David Parkinson gave "Cries and Whispers" five stars in 2000, writing that the film fit a subset of "character study" at which Bergman was adept. Reviewing the DVD in "The New Yorker", Richard Brody said that despite its period setting, the emotional drama resonated with modern audiences. Ebert added it to his "Great Movies" list in 2002, writing that to watch the film "is to touch the extremes of human feeling. It is so personal, so penetrating of privacy, we almost want to look away". That year, James Berardinelli praised Andersson's performance as "so powerful that we feel like intruders watching it. She screams, whimpers, begs, and cries. She craves death and fears it". Berardinelli considered Bergman's use of crimson effective in creating mood; the "natural associations one makes with this color, especially in a story like this, are of sin and blood". Zendry Svärdkrona's 2003 "Aftonbladet" review called it a masterpiece with wonderful aesthetics but unpleasant subject matter, citing Nykvist and Andersson. Emanuel Levy praised the film's cinematography and the performances of the female leads, calling the result a masterpiece in 2008. "Cries and Whispers" ranked 154th in the British Film Institute's 2012 "Sight & Sound" critics' poll of the greatest films ever made. Leonard Maltin gave the film three stars in his "2014 Movie Guide", praising its visuals but cautioning viewers about the large amount of dialogue. Reviewing the Blu-ray in 2015, "SF Gate" critic Mick LaSalle called "Cries and Whispers" a "masterpiece" in which the colour red had an important effect. "Los Angeles Times" critic Andy Klein placed the film "solidly in the existential/emotional angst mode of [Bergman's] best work", called it a triumphant comeback from "The Touch", and joked about the resurrection scene: "Yes, technically this is a zombie film". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film five stars out of five writing "This film burns, like ice held to the skin."


title: Cries and Whispers

text: Don Druker wrote a negative review in the "Chicago Reader", criticising a lack of substance, and "Time Out"s review called the film a "red herring" compared to Bergman's purer psychological dramas. In a 2015 "Slant Magazine" review, Clayton Dillard expressed disappointment in Agnes' cancer not being depicted as such (with her expressing passion-like pain instead) and Karin's self-harm not being clearly explained.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "Cries and Whispers" has an approval rating of 94% based on 33 reviews, with an average score of 8.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Visually stunning and achingly performed, Ingmar Bergman's chamber piece is a visceral rumination on death and sisterhood."


title: Cries and Whispers

text: "Cries and Whispers" won three categories at the 9th Guldbagge Awards in Sweden, including Best Film. At Cannes, it won the Technical Grand Prize. It was the fourth foreign-language film ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, in addition to four other nominations at the 46th Academy Awards; Sven Nykvist won for Best Cinematography.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: The film was nominated for, and won, several other awards from critics' associations and festivals. At the 27th British Academy Film Awards, Sven Nykvist was nominated for Best Cinematography and Ingrid Thulin for Best Supporting Actress; at the 30th Golden Globe Awards, it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: In 1981, PostNord Sverige issued a postage stamp of the scene where Anna holds Agnes as part of a series commemorating the history of Swedish cinema. Woody Allen's later films, including 1978's "Interiors" and 1987's "Hannah and Her Sisters", were influenced by "Cries and Whispers", as was Margarethe von Trotta's 1979—1988 trilogy: "Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness", "Marianne and Juliane" and "Love and Fear". In 2017, Hallwyl Museum exhibited costumes from "Cries and Whispers" and other Bergman films.


title: Cries and Whispers

text: It has been adapted for the stage. Andrei Șerban directed "Cries and Whispers" in 2010 for the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, dramatising Bergman's story and the film's production. Ivo van Hove directed a 2009 adaptation at the Bergman Festival in Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre, and in 2011 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Chris Nietvelt as Agnes, moving the story to a contemporary setting, reducing the use of red and replacing the film's classical music with modern songs, including Janis Joplin's "Cry Baby".


title: Let's roll

text: "Let's roll" is a colloquialism that has been used extensively as a command to move and start an activity, attack, mission or project. They were the last recorded words of passenger Todd Beamer on board United Airlines Flight 93 during the September 11 attacks in 2001, before he and other passengers attempted to storm the cockpit and retake the plane from the hijackers. The slogan subsequently became a battle cry for American forces during the War on terror.


title: Let's roll

text: On September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer, a passenger on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, tried to place a call through an air phone, but was routed to a customer service representative instead, who passed him on to supervisor Lisa Jefferson. Beamer reported that one passenger had been killed and that a flight attendant had told him that both the pilot and co-pilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been injured. He was also on the phone when the plane made a quick and violent turn. Later, he told the operator that some of the other passengers were planning to attack the hijackers and regain control of the aircraft, after they learned about what happened at the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. According to Jefferson, Beamer's last audible words were “Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll.”


title: Let's roll

text: In a November 8 address from the World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia, President George W. Bush invoked Beamer's words: “Some of our greatest moments have been acts of courage for which no one could have been prepared. But we have our marching orders. My fellow Americans, let's roll!” He used them again in the 2002 State of the Union address: “For too long our culture has said, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: ‘Let's roll.’”


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: The Saint is a 2017 American action film directed by Ernie Barbarash and starring Adam Rayner in the title role of Simon Templar, created by Leslie Charteris. This was Sir Roger Moore's final film appearance and the film was dedicated to his memory as he died two months before the release; Moore portrayed Templar in a 1960s TV series of the same title. Filmed in 2013 as a television pilot for a proposed TV series, the film was not originally intended for release when the series was not picked up. It eventually saw release direct-to-video in 2017 when it was released in tribute to Moore following his death. Ian Ogilvy, who portrayed Templar in a 1970s TV series titled "Return of the Saint", also appears.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Simon Templar intervenes when terrorists attempt to trade gold to the Russian Army for bombs. After subduing both parties, he takes most of the gold and escapes, leaving his calling card as "The Saint". Agent Cooper of the FBI has been monitoring the meeting.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Nigerian President Ezekiel Ibaka secures $2.5 billion in private aid for his country, but a mysterious man (Ian Ogilvy) instructs associate Arnie Valecross, a private banker with criminal ties, to steal the funds. He gives Valecross a ring, claiming that it is an heirloom he took from "someone pathetic".


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Templar takes the gold from the Moscow heist to an old friend in Bucharest. He gives instructions to distribute the funds among various humanitarian aid organizations.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: In Los Angeles, Valecross diverts the funds to one of his own accounts and requests protection from the FBI. His mysterious employer sends his henchman, Rayt Marius, to kidnap Valecross' daughter Zooey, giving Arnie only 48 hours to return the money.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: In Paris, France, Templar hears of the Nigerian theft and agrees to help recover the funds. Simon's friend Patricia Holm and the FBI each use their own methods to quickly identify the thief as Valecross and track him to the Grand Del Mar Resort in San Diego.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Special Agent John Henry Fernack, who has been pursuing The Saint for years, gets to Valecross' suite first and unsuccessfully attempts to question him. Templar uses the adjoining room to break into Valecross' suite, but he is discovered. Valecross asks Templar to rescue his daughter. Marius uses a helicopter to fire on Templar through the window. Templar shoots down the helicopter, but Valecross is fatally wounded. As he dies, Valecross tells Templar: "The account numbers are in your ring, the key is in the nomad".


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Simon and Patricia engage Doyle Cosentino to develop a new plan now that Valecross is dead. It is revealed that Simon met Patricia in Iraq while escaping from the Russian deal. The trio search for the "nomad" in Valecross' home. Mrs Valecross immediately recognizes Templar. They decide to call Marius, who has a history with Patricia.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Fernack obtains help from the Los Angeles Police Department in the form of Detective Garces (Greg Grunberg). The two men nearly catch Simon when he, Patricia and Doyle leave the Valecross home. The trio notice the men tailing them and escape. Fernack catches up to Templar on a funicular railway car in a busy retail area. Simon overpowers and handcuffs him, escaping by jumping onto a car moving in the opposite direction. Simon, Patricia and Doyle visit former counterfeiter Sonali Alves in her hidden MMA fighting studio and gambling den. They ask for help breaking into Valecross' data storage facility. She forces Simon to battle a fighter in the ring while handcuffed in exchange for the heist gear he needs. During the fight, Simon's handcuffs are broken and he easily defeats his opponent.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Entering the storage facility, Patricia knocks out the guards. She guides Simon as he penetrates the security on two heavy duty doors and disables the pressure-sensitive floor. He uses a glove that mimics fingerprints of a building employee to access the computer server room, and begins searching for the account data. Fernack arrives too late and Simon escapes with the data, locking Fernack in the server room. Outside, Templar finds that Garces has been shot and that Marius has captured Patricia.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Fernack agrees to work with Simon to rescue Patricia and Zooey. Overpowering the armed guards on the boat, they attempt to trade the stolen funds for Marius' hostages. Marius reveals that Patricia is his ex-wife and that he is working for the man who killed Simon's parents. Fernack tries to rescue Zooey but is restrained by her stepmother, who is working with Marius. Templar shoots Marius when tries to use Zooey as a shield, and Patricia knocks him to the floor. Marius refuses to identify his employer.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: The mysterious man calls for help from an associate (Roger Moore) who refuses him, knowing their superiors will make an example of him for his failure. Simon tails the mystery man, recognizing him as his parents' killer by a unique tattoo on his arm. Templar identifies him as Xander, hired by Simon's father to train Simon to fight as a youth. Xander warns him that it does not end with him hinting others had a hand as well. Resisting the urge to kill the man, Templar allows Xander to be arrested by Agent Cooper on terrorism charges. Simon disappears from sight while still remembering it never ended with Xander.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: A new television adaptation of "The Saint" was announced in December 2012; Roger Moore was appointed to produce a new series to star Adam Rayner as Simon Templar and Eliza Dushku as his assistant Patricia Holm. In a later promotion, it was also shown that Moore would star in the new series, as would his successor in "Return of the Saint", Ian Ogilvy. Production of a pilot episode was completed by early 2013. As of summer 2014, it was awaiting a broadcast time in the U.S. However, the piece underwent reshoots for the ending and add an extra prologue in November 2015, and the pilot episode was retooled as a TV film, "The Saint", getting an online release on 12 July 2017, two months after Moore's death.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: The pilot was based upon the character created by Leslie Charteris in 1928, and although the plot of the film has no relation to any of Charteris' stories, the villain, Rayt Marius, was a recurring presence in the early Saint novels, and was the central villain of the 1930 novel "The Last Hero".


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: Although the character of Patricia Holm was a regular presence in the Saint novels from the 1920s through to the early 1940s, this was only the second production (after the 1943 film "The Saint Meets the Tiger") in which she has appeared.


title: The Saint (2017 film)

text: While the pilot was directed by Simon West, the new material to extend it was directed by Ernie Barbarash. He had limited windows of availability for Rayner, who was busy on his series Tyrant, and Dushku; in the new material Rayner sports a beard, as in "Tyrant", and Templar's new scenes with Holm take place over Skype calls so the actors did not need to be available on the same day. Inspector Fernack does not appear in the new scenes with the bearded Templar; an equivalent role is filled by Kyle Horne as FBI agent Cooper. Ian Ogilvy's role was greatly expanded, with new flashbacks to establish his backstory, and Roger Moore recorded new dialogue to replace lines which no longer fit the reworked plot.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: The National Invitational Tournament (NIT) is a men's college basketball tournament operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Played at regional sites and traditionally at Madison Square Garden (Final Four) in New York City each March and April, it was founded in 1938 and was originally the most prestigious post-season showcase for college basketball. The 2021 tournament, in which all games were played in Denton and Frisco, Texas, marked the first time that the NIT's semifinals and championship games were not hosted at Madison Square Garden; MSG won't play host to the games entirely starting in 2023.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: Over time, it became eclipsed by the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, which is now known informally as "March Madness." The NIT is now a tournament for teams that do not receive a berth in the NCAA tournament.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: A second, much more recent "NIT" tournament is played in November and known as the NIT Season Tip-Off. Formerly the "Preseason NIT", it was founded in 1985. Like the postseason NIT, its final rounds are played at Madison Square Garden. Both tournaments were operated by the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) until 2005, when they were purchased by the NCAA, and the MIBA disbanded.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: Unless otherwise qualified, the terms "NIT" or "National Invitation Tournament" refer to the post-season tournament in both common and official use.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: The post-season National Invitation Tournament was founded in 1938 by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association, one year after the NAIA tournament was created by basketball's inventor Dr. James Naismith, and one year before the NCAA tournament. The first NIT was won by the Temple University Owls over the Colorado Buffaloes.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: Responsibility for the NIT's administration was transferred in 1940 to the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Committee, a body of local New York colleges: Fordham University, Manhattan College, New York University, St. John's University, and Wagner College. This became the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) in 1948.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: Originally the tournament invited a field of six teams, with all games played at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: The field was expanded to eight teams in 1941, 12 in 1949, 14 in 1965, 16 in 1968, 24 in 1979, 32 in 1980, and 40 from 2002 through 2006. From 2007 to 2019 and since 2022, the tournament reverted to the current 32-team format; 2021 saw the field cut to 16 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where no games were scheduled the year before.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: From its onset and at least into the mid-1950s, the NIT was regarded as the most prestigious showcase for college basketball. All-American at Princeton and later NBA champion with the New York Knicks and United States Senator Bill Bradley stated:


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: Several teams played in both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year, beginning with Colorado and Duquesne in 1940. Colorado won the NIT in 1940 but subsequently finished fourth in the NCAA West Region. In 1944, Utah lost its first game in the NIT but then proceeded to win not only the NCAA tournament, but also the subsequent Red Cross War Charities benefit game in which they defeated NIT champion St. John's at Madison Square Garden. In 1949, some Kentucky players were bribed by gamblers to lose their first round game in the NIT. This same Kentucky team went on to win the NCAA. In 1950, City College of New York won both the NIT and the NCAA tournaments in the same season, coincidentally defeating Bradley University in the championship game of both tournaments, and remains the only school to accomplish that feat because of an NCAA committee change in the early 1950s prohibiting a team from competing in both tournaments.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: The champions of both the NCAA and NIT tournaments played each other for three seasons during World War II. From 1943 to 1945, the American Red Cross sponsored a postseason charity game between each year's tournament champions to raise money for the war effort. The series was described by Ray Meyer as not just benefit games, but as "really the games for the national championship". The NCAA champion prevailed in all three games.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: The Helms Athletic Foundation retrospectively selected the NIT champion as its national champion for 1938 (Temple) and chose the NIT champion over the NCAA champion once, in 1939 (Long Island). More recently, the mathematically based Premo-Porretta Power Poll published in the "ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia" retrospectively ranked teams for each season prior to 1949, the year in which the Associated Press poll was implemented. For the period when the tournaments overlapped between 1939 and 1948, Premo-Porretta ranked the NIT champion ahead of the NCAA champion twice (1939 and 1941) and the NCAA champion ahead of the NIT champion eight times. Between 1939 and 1970, when teams could compete in either tournament, only DePaul (1945), Utah (1947), San Francisco (1949) and Holy Cross (1954) claim or celebrate national championships for their teams based solely on an NIT championship, although Long Island recognizes its selection as the 1939 national champion by Helms Athletic Foundation, which was made retrospectively in 1943.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: In 1943 the NCAA tournament moved to share Madison Square Garden with the NIT in an effort to increase the credibility of the NCAA Tournament. In 1945, "The New York Times" indicated that many teams could get bids to enter either tournament, which was not uncommon in that day. In any case, since the mid-1950s, the NCAA tournament has been popularly regarded by most institutions as the pre-eminent postseason tournament, with conference champions and the majority of the top-ranked teams participating in it.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: Nevertheless, as late as 1970, Coach Al McGuire of Marquette, the 8th-ranked team in the final AP poll of the season, spurned an NCAA at-large invitation because the Warriors were going to be placed in the NCAA Midwest Regional (Fort Worth, Texas) instead of closer to home in the Mideast Regional (Dayton, Ohio). The team played in the NIT instead, which it won. This led the NCAA to decree in 1971 that any school to which it offered a bid must accept it or be prohibited from participating in postseason competition, reducing the pool of teams that could accept an NIT invitation.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: As the NCAA tournament expanded its field to include more teams, the reputation of the NIT suffered. In 1973, NBC moved televised coverage of the NCAA championship from Saturday afternoon to Monday evening, providing the NCAA Tournament with prime-time television exposure the NIT could not match. Even more crucially, when the NCAA eliminated the one-team-per-conference rule in 1975, its requirement that teams accept its bids relegated the NIT to a collection of teams that did not make the NCAA grade.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: Compounding this, to cut costs, the NIT moved its early rounds out of Madison Square Garden in 1977, playing games at home sites until the later rounds. This further harmed the NIT's prestige, both regionalizing interest in it and marginalizing it by reducing its association with Madison Square Garden. By the mid-1980s, its transition to a secondary tournament for lesser teams was complete.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: In 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association purchased 10-year rights to the NIT from the MIBA for $56.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit, which had gone to trial and was being argued until very shortly before the settlement was announced. The MIBA alleged that compelling teams to accept invitations to the NCAA tournament even if they preferred to play in the NIT was an illegal use of the NCAA's powers. In addition, it argued that the NCAA's expansion of its tournament to 65 teams (68 since 2011) was designed specifically to bankrupt the NIT. Faced with the very real possibility of being found in violation of federal antitrust law for the third time in its history, the NCAA chose to settle. (The first two violations were related to restrictions on televising college football and capping assistant coach salaries.) As part of the purchase of the NIT by the NCAA, the MIBA disbanded.


title: National Invitation Tournament

text: The 2020 edition of the NIT was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, following the NCAA canceling all winter and spring sports for that year in its wake. In 2021, the NIT, like March Madness, decided to play its games at a bubble location, this time being Denton and Frisco, Texas, therefore for the first time the semifinals and championship weren't played at the historic Madison Square Garden. After a return to MSG in 2022, the 2023 and 2024 semis and final will be moved away from New York. On August 12, 2022, the NCAA announced that the final rounds of the 2023 NIT would be held at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas and hosted by nearby UNLV, and the 2024 site would be Butler University's Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.