Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Motion picture distribution |
Founded | 1956 Cambridge, Massachusetts |
Founder | Bryant Haliday Cyrus Harvey Jr. |
Headquarters | , |
Key people | Saul J. Turell William J. Becker |
Revenue | $6.1 million USD (2007) |
Owner | Steven Rales |
Subsidiaries | The Criterion Collection |
Website | www.janusfilms.com |
Janus Films is an American film distribution company. The distributor is credited with introducing numerous films, now considered masterpieces of world cinema, to American audiences, including the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergei Eisenstein, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, François Truffaut, Yasujirō Ozu and many other well-regarded directors. Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) was the film responsible for the company's initial growth.[1]
Janus has a close business relationship with The Criterion Collection regarding the release of its films on DVD and Blu-ray and is still an active theatrical distributor.
The company's name and logo come from Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transitions, passages, beginnings, and endings.