All you need to know about Ingmar Bergman – and probably a little more

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

13/07/2012 - “The new cheese is rubbish, it doesn’t taste of anything,” wrote Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) to his former housekeeper Anita Haglof, who worked for him between 1995-2005. In other notes, some with sketches, he mentioned his whereabouts, liking for certain gingerbread biscuits and how he wanted his bed to be made.

Bergman’s letters, notations for his housekeeper, all his film scripts, prose, notebooks and essays – the IB Archives, a collection of more than 60 years of creative output included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register – are administered by the IB Foundation, which has revamped its www.ingmarbergman.se website, originally launched in 2005.

Since Bergman was also the master of the self-interview (he did his first in 1946, his last in 1994 – check them on the site), the foundation’s executive manager Jan Holmberg has had a discussion with himself about what has been changed: “Er, yeah. We still possess the world's largest collection of Bergman's work, just that now we are more modern, more fun, more attractive, much larger and ... well, overall much better than before,” he explained.

The IB Archives of Bergman’s writings, which have been increased 300-fold, are not open to the public, but visitors to the site will find the latest IB news on stage and screen, and they will “learn what a bone folder and The Principle of Provenance are. We have images of all 200+ Bergman plays which have been staged around the world; a map displaying all locations where Bergman worked, filmed and lived; the world's best-ever timeline; our very own archive blog”, Holmberg told himself.

The IB Foundation is backed by the Swedish Film Institute; Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre-Dramaten, (where IB was ceo between 1963-1966 and staged more than 30 of his plays); Swedish major Svensk Filmindustri (which produced most of IB’s films); and Swedish public broadcaster SVT.