“If we can pull together enough money we’d like to buy the house,” Kerstin Kalström, a member of a working group currently creating the Bergman Centre on Fårö foundation, told AFP.

The foundation, set to be headed by former Swedish prime minister Ingvar Carlsson, has received 300,000 kronor ($37,300) in start-up capital from the municipality of Gotland, which incorporates the small island of Fårö in the Baltic Sea where Bergman lived until his death in 2007.

“But that is just to start the foundation… We will need sponsors to buy the house,” Kalström said, pointing out that the foundation was planning to set up a Bergman centre in an old school building for exhibits and screenings of his movies.

Bergman’s nearby home, Hammars, is expected to go up for sale within a few months, she said, insisting she had no idea how much it would cost to buy the sprawling property, where a number of scenes from Bergman films were shot.

According to Swedish media reports, however, the house of the maker of such masterpieces as “Wild Strawberries” (1957), “The Virgin Spring” (1960), “Scenes from a Marriage” (1973), and “Saraband” (2003) was expected to cost around 35 million kronor ($4.4 million).