The Swedish government said on Monday it would donate almost $3-million (€2,12-million) to preserve the works and memory of legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman who died in July.
The money will be used to host an annual international theatre festival organised by the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Bergman’s honour and to make digital copies of his films.
The theatre will also be given funds to buy the rights to Bergman’s works.
”It is important to ensure that Ingmar Bergman’s artistic heritage is managed and can provide inspiration to the audience of tomorrow and the film and stage world of the future,” Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth wrote in leading Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.
Bergman died at his home on the Baltic island of Faaroe on July 30 aged 89.
For many movie buffs, Bergman was the greatest of the authorial filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s, alongside such figures as Federico Fellini, Luis Bunuel or Jean-Luc Godard.
For more than three decades he produced an average of a movie a year, including Wild Strawberries (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Saraband (2003).
On Monday, the Royal Dramatic Theatre and the government were to hold a memorial in Bergman’s honour featuring many of his leading actors, including Lena Endre, Pernilla August and Boerje Ahlstedt. – Sapa-AFP