For over a quarter of a century, New Yorker Films has been America's leading source for the films that matter on the cutting edge of world cinema.

The company was founded in 1965 by Daniel Talbot as an outgrowth of his legendary movie house, the New Yorker Theater. Unable to obtain several crucial foreign titles, Talbot was obliged to import them himself. Early acquisitions such as Bertolucci's BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, Godard's LES CARABINIERS, and Sembene's BLACK GIRL established New Yorker's still vital tradition of presenting the world's most innovative, artistically significant, and politically engaged films.

Controversial and challenging works considered untouchable by other distributors have been regularly taken on by New Yorker (and often turned into surprise hits), including Jacques Rivette's self-reflexive masterpiece CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING, Chantal Akerman's feminist landmark JEANNE DIELMAN..., Claude Lanzmann's monumental Holocaust documentary SHOAH, and Emir Kusturica's unruly epic UNDERGROUND. Always on the alert for fresh talent and new trends, New Yorker Films was the primary force in introducing this country to the pioneeringly postmodernist New German Cinema, the politically embattled Latin American cinema, and the postcolonial African cinema. It discovered the early breakthrough works of such now-celebrated filmmakers as Agnieszka Holland, Juzo Itami, Errol Morris, Wayne Wang, and Zhang Yimou. More recent acquisitions have explored exciting new frontiers in the Iranian, Asian, and Eastern European cinemas.

In addition to its theatrical premieres, New Yorker's strength is its ability to service the nontheatrical market, catering to the specialized needs of film society and classroom venues that fall beneath the radar of larger, more monolithic companies. The heart of New Yorker Films is a library of unsurpassed quality and depth, culled from leading independent and foreign film distributors such as Sony Classics, First Look, and Lions Gate. Combining historical reach with cutting-edge currency, the library's range extends from restored classics like L'ATALANTE and NIGHTS OF CABIRIA to recent causes célèbres such as HAPPINESS and LOLITA, from Oscar winners like ANTONIA'S LINE and CHARACTER to offbeat gems such as LATCHO DROM and GABBEH. The New Yorker library is a major source for trailblazing works by international women filmmakers such as Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Doris Dörrie, Maria Novaro, Sally Potter, Brigitte Roüan, and Margarethe von Trotta. It also features essential titles by leading lights of the American indie renaissance, including Allison Anders, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, John Sayles, Todd Solondz, and Gus Van Sant. A distinctive feature of the library is its devotion to accumulating works by important individual directors -- a policy especially suited to retrospectives and university courses. Here you will find the most extensive collections anywhere of the films of such seminal cinéastes as Alea, Almodóvar, Fassbinder, Godard, Herzog, Oshima, Ozu, Satyajit Ray, Sembene, Straub, Tanner, and Zhang Yimou.

Since 1990 New Yorker Films has extended its tradition of quality into the video market. An average of thirty new titles per year are released in video, representing a broad selection of the best in classic, foreign, and independent cinema. Special effort is made to obtain the finest-quality masters (including an ever increasing number of digital masters) and to provide such premium features as enhanced subtitling to improve legibility and letterboxing to preserve the film's original visual format.

In a time when the term "independent" has been loosely applied to subsidiaries of giant conglomerates, New Yorker stands as the most durable, important, and truly independent of independent film distributors. It is beholden to no other company, and it continues to be shaped by the enthusiasm and vision of its very active founder. In its fourth decade and going strong, New Yorker Films still represents the vanguard of film distribution in the United States.