Andrei Tarkovsky's archive sold to Russia for two million dollars

The archive of film director Andrei Tarkovsky was sold at Sotheby's auction for 1 million 300 thousand pounds sterling (a little more than two million dollars), the auction house told Interfax on Wednesday.

The starting price of the archive, which was determined by experts at the auction house, was about 100 thousand pounds.

The archive was sold to Russia. It is not yet known who the buyer is.

The Andrei Tarkovsky archive includes his letters, drafts, audio recordings and photographs. The previous owner of the archive, film scholar Olga Surkova, who lives in Holland, claims that the director himself at one time abandoned these materials and wanted to throw them away. She repeatedly offered to sell the archive to Russia, and for symbolic money, but no one was interested.

The day before, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky said that he had held negotiations with some private individuals who could afford such a purchase at an auction, Ekho Moskvy clarifies.