Schamus Bids to Preserve Bergman Estate

By Nick Dawson On June 19, 2009

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on current attempts to help save the homes of two prominent cultural figures. In addition to writing about novelist Herman Hesse's apartment, WSJ journalist Sara Lin detailed Focus Features CEO James Schamus' efforts to preserve the 84-acre estate in Sweden previously owned by the late auteur Ingmar Bergman:

Mr. Schamus, CEO of Focus Features and an Academy Award nominee as a producer of Brokeback Mountain, says he’s seeking “high net-worth film types” and estimates the property would cost at least $2.5 million. There’s a 3,200-square-foot main house, built in 1967, a two-room writer’s lodge made of timber, a 19th-century farmhouse and a second three-bedroom home with a guest wing. Bergman, who died in 2007 and is known for such films as “The Seventh Seal,” lived on the island for four decades and filmed several movies there. The nonprofit Faro Bergman Center Foundation would like to establish a film center there.

You can read the entire article at the WSJ website here.