Icarus Films forms new label
INDIE FILM GUIDE: First release will be this fall
By Laurence Lerman -- Video Business, 5/19/2008
MAY 19 | INDIE FILM GUIDE: Independent distributor Icarus Films will launch its own home entertainment label this fall, beginning with the DVD release of four titles featuring the work of noted French filmmaker Chris Marker. The Case of the Grinning Cat, The Last Bolshevik/Happiness, The Sixth Side of the Pentagon/The Embassy and Remembrance of Things to Come will be issued on Sept. 2 under the imprimatur Icarus Films.
For years, all Icarus titles for the retail market, which are primarily documentaries, have been distributed through First Run Features. Icarus Films and First Run merged their institutional divisions in 1987 as First Run/Icarus.
“It’s a good time to be doing this,” says Jonathan Miller, president of First Run/Icarus for the past 21 years. “My idea is to occupy a space between Docurama and Criterion.”
There will be at least one more Icarus Films title going out on DVD through First Run Features: the 2000 gay-themed doc Our House, which streets May 20.
The company will add a person to its staff of eight employees for its new home entertainment venture, though Miller says he will still consider distributing titles through First Run Features in the future.
Icarus Films has more than 25 titles slated for release following the premiere of the Marker films, including The Battle of Chile from 1976 and, from this decade, Forever, about Paris’ Père Lachaise cemetery, and The Ister, which documents a 3,000-kilometer journey up the Danube River.
