Janus Films

Janus Films is a 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, 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. Janus has a close relationship with The Criterion Collection regarding the release of its films on DVD and is still an active theatrical distributor.

The company's name and logo come from Janus, the two-faced Roman god.

History

Janus Films was founded in 1956 by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey, Jr., in the historic Brattle Theater, a Harvard Square landmark in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to the conception of Janus, Haliday and Harvey began screening both foreign and American films at the Brattle and proceeded to regularly fill the 300-seat venue. Having purchased the theater, Haliday, together with Harvey, converted the Brattle into a popular movie house for the showing of art films.