Starting this fall, Criterion will proudly join Janus Films in presenting Janus Contemporaries, a new line of home-video editions of first-run releases, fresh from theaters, following their streaming premieres on the Criterion Channel.
Kicking off with Jerzy Skolimowski’s Cannes Jury Prize winner and Academy Award nominee EO, the 2023 slate of the Janus Contemporaries line will feature Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent, Hlynur Pálmason’s Godland, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Tori and Lokita, and Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains.
The Blu-ray and DVD editions will include new interviews with the filmmakers produced by Criterion as part of the Criterion Channel series Meet the Filmmakers, and will retail for $29.95 (Blu-ray) and $24.95 (DVD).
Known for more than sixty-five years as the premier U.S. distributor of international art-house cinema, Janus is home to many of the greatest movies ever made, from such vaunted masters as Chantal Akerman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau, the Coen brothers, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray, Ousmane Sembène, François Truffaut, Melvin Van Peebles, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, and Wong Kar Wai. Last year, when Sight and Sound revealed the results of its once-a-decade poll, the critics’ and directors’ lists of the top hundred films of all time each included more than fifty entries from the Janus library.
After premiering many key works by Antonioni, Bergman, and Fellini in the 1960s, Janus largely stepped away from first-run theatrical distribution. Following the release of Kurosawa’s Dodes’ka-den (1970), the company focused on theatrical runs of restored classics from its library until 2009, when it distributed Götz Spielmann’s Revanche.
Over the past decade, Janus has released a steady stream of celebrated art-house hits, including Academy Award winners like Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, which marked the start of Janus’s landmark partnership with bespoke theatrical specialist Sideshow.
With a more robust first-run lineup than it has had since the 1960s and powerful partnerships with theatrical specialists Sideshow and the Criterion Channel streaming service, Janus is uniquely well positioned to bring the best films from around the world to theaters and homes across North America. The launch of Janus Contemporaries completes that picture.
This is very cool!! This opens the doors nicely for more physical media releases that don’t quite make the cut in the main collection, and for a cheaper MSRP.
This is a smart move but I realllllly wanted a 4K EO release...oh well. With Janus distributing more and more lately, I guess they didn't want so many contemporary films in the collection.
Count me in for all of them! I wonder if these will be part of the monthly announcements, or just announced randomly. The $29.95 is workable and affordable.
Launching a new sub-label to appease those pearl-clutchers who don't want new films polluting the main collection with titles by Jerzy Skolimowski (with his best film in 40 years), Jafar Panahi, and the Dardenne Brothers is actually quite funny.
Launching a new sub-label to appease those pearl-clutchers who don't want new films polluting the main collection with titles by Jerzy Skolimowski (with his best film in 40 years), Jafar Panahi, and the Dardenne Brothers is actually quite funny.
I'm not sure if that is really what it is. It sounds like Janus Films are going to continue to do more theatrical acquisitions and distributions and they want to be able to put those films out quickly. In the last two years, two of their acquisitions got Oscar nominations or wins. Separation of the operations makes sense.
But yes, those films you mention in particular seem like they'd fit very much into the main collection...
Pearl clutching should be an Olympic sport. Maybe pearl diving then they swim to the surface and clutch them tightly while treading water. Winner stays afloat the longest...clutching those pearls. My money is on Japan taking the gold.
Criterion saw how Vinegar Syndrome moved units for their Partner Labels, and they want in on some of that money.
It makes sense if Janus is going to get more into theatrical distributions and want a pipeline for these films to be quickly released on video. They have such a backlog of titles to release, that this might be a way to improve their output if there is a surge of recent new movies.
It will be interesting to see how Criterion releases modern films since their focus is a "continuing series of important classic and contemporary films". I imagine the contemporary films not distributed theatrically by Janus will fall under the Criterion label. Gives everyone something to argue on where a film should have landed if they disagree. More physical media releases is a good thing.
Interesting news for just new releases. So would something like Drive My Car been part of this?
Now to get them to bring back the Eclipse line for HD films.
Yep, it would have been. Drive My Car was actually the catalyst here. The newly formed company Sideshow, partnered with Janus/Criterion to acquire Drive My Car, and that was a major success. Most if not all of these films listed above are Sideshow/Janus adquisitions.
i wonder what the packing will look like. there’s no indication from their site.
the weird part for me is that they list zero technical specs
Yeah, this announcement seems a little premature. They didn't even announce it on any social media yet. I would hope they're not overthinking the packaging for these, and just go with standard Scanavo case.
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