ASPEN, Colo.—A Colorado theater company has acquired the American rights to the works of legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman after a long dispute over a historic Aspen theater.
Aspen’s Isis Theatre announced this week it has acquired rights to the works it was awarded in an eight-year dispute with Svensk Filmindustri, the Swedish company that backed Isis’ lease when it wanted to convert the theater into a multiplex cinema.
A Pitkin County, Colo., judge last summer awarded Bergman’s catalog to Isis. But it took more than six months for Isis to acquire the rights, said Jack Smith, a Denver lawyer specializing in intellectual property who has worked on Isis’ case since it was filed in 2000.
The settlement could mean wider distribution of 200 titles, including the filmmaker’s classics, such as “The Seventh Seal,” “Cries and Whispers” and “Hour of the Wolf,” which were seldom distributed in the United States. Isis has also acquired rights to hundreds of lesser-known Svensk films, some almost a century old.
Officials at Svensk Filmindustri declined comment Thursday and a message left for president and CEO Rasmus Ramstad was not immediately returned.
Smith said Thursday that some of Bergman’s films are available in the U.S. on DVD through separate agreements, but that the acquisition of the Svensk’s whole catalog by Isis clears the way for wider distribution.
Svensk had withheld Bergman’s work from the U.S. as Isis was poised to garnish the Swedish company’s royalties to collect on the debt. Smith said Isis is owed some $10 million from the property dispute, and that the theater company will seek to sell rights to the Svensk films to recoup the debt.
The Isis Theater is now owned by a group that includes the city of Aspen, Smith said.
Bergman was widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema. His 1982 film “Fanny and Alexander” won an Oscar for best foreign film.
Bergman died in 2007 in Sweden at the age of 89.
