A major film studio is a movie production and distribution company that releases a substantial number of films annually and consistently commands a significant share of box-office revenues in a given market. In the North American, Western, and global markets, the major film studios, often simply known as the majors, are commonly regarded as the six diversified media conglomerates whose various movie production and distribution subsidiaries command approximately 90 percent of the U.S. and Canadian box office. The term may also be applied more specifically to the primary movie business subsidiary of each respective conglomerate. The "Big Six" majors, whose movie operations are based in or around Hollywood, are all centered in film studios active during Hollywood's Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s. In three cases—20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., and Paramount—the studios were one of the "Big Five" majors during that era as well. In two cases—Columbia and Universal—the studios were also considered majors, but in the next tier down, part of the "Little Three". In the sixth case, Walt Disney Studios was an independent production company during the Golden Age; it was an important Hollywood entity, but not a major.

Most of today's Big Six control subsidiaries with their own distribution networks that concentrate on arthouse pictures (e.g., Fox Searchlight) or genre films (e.g., Sony's Screen Gems); several of these specialty units were shut down or sold off between 2008 and 2010. The six major movie studios are contrasted with smaller movie production and/or distribution companies, which are known as independents or "indies". The leading independent producer/distributors—Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company, Relativity Media, FilmDistrict, CBS Films, and former major studio MGM—are sometimes referred to as "mini-majors". From 1998 through 2005, DreamWorks SKG commanded a large enough market share to arguably qualify it as a seventh major, despite its relatively small output. In 2006, DreamWorks was acquired by Viacom, Paramount's corporate parent. In late 2008, DreamWorks once again became an independent production company; its films are distributed by Touchstone Pictures.

The major studios are today primarily backers and distributors of films whose actual production is largely handled by independent companies—either long-running entities or ones created for and dedicated to the making of a specific film. The specialty divisions often simply acquire distribution rights to pictures in which the studio has had no prior involvement. While the majors do a modicum of true production, their activities are focused more in the areas of development, financing, marketing, and merchandising.

Today's Big Six[link]

^1 Paramount: 19.3% (Prev. totals: 2010—16.8%; 2009—14.3%; 2008—17.2%; 2007—16.1%; 2006—11.0%; 2005—9.8%; 2004—6.8%)
^2 Warner Bros.: 18.1% (Prev. totals: 2010—18.0%; 2009—20.1%; 2008—19.4%; 2007—20.5%; 2006—14.9%; 2005—21.7%; 2004—17.7%)
^3 Sony (Columbia/Screen Gems): 12.6%; Sony Classics: 0.8% (Prev. totals: 2010—12.8%; 2009—14.2%; 2008—13.4%; 2007—13.4%; 2006—19.3%; 2005—11.1%; 2004—16.8%)
^4 Disney: 12.2% (Prev. totals: 2010—14.3%; 2009—11.9%; 2008—11.4%; 2007—15.3%; 2006—16.7%; 2005—14.6%; 2004—16.5%)
^5 Universal: 10.1%; Focus Features: 1.2% (Prev. totals: 2010—9.2%; 2009—10.0%; 2008—12.9%; 2007—12.7%; 2006—10.9%; 2005—13.2%; 2004—10.8%)
^6 20th Century Fox: 9.6%; Fox Searchlight 1.5% (Prev. totals: 2009—14.8%; 2009—16.1%; 2008—13.2%; 2007—11.9%; 2006—17.0%; 2005—16.5%; 2004—11.7%)

The "mini-majors"[link]

The studios[link]

Lions Gate Entertainment, which moved in 2006 from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Santa Monica, California, was the most successful North American movie studio based outside of the Los Angeles metropolitan area before its relocation. Now known as Lionsgate, it was founded in 1997 by financier Frank Giustra.^[2] (The company is unrelated to Lion's Gate Films, the Los Angeles–based production company run by filmmaker Robert Altman in the 1970s.)^[3] In 2003, the company doubled in size with the acquisition of Artisan Entertainment.^[4] In January 2012, Lionsgate acquired Summit Entertainment, which was the highest-grossing mini-major the previous three years.^[5] Summit was founded as an independent overseas sales company in 1991, moved into production in the mid-1990s, and was reconstituted as a full-fledged studio in 2006.^[6] It saw its first major success with Twilight in autumn 2008, followed shortly after by its first Oscar-winning production, The Hurt Locker. Through its acquisition of Summit, Lionsgate added the highly profitable Twilight franchise to its Saw and Tyler Perry franchises.^[7] Lionsgate also owns a minority stake in the independent distribution company Roadside Attractions.^[8]

The Weinstein Company was founded in late 2005 by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein after their departure from Miramax, which they had founded in 1979. In 1993, they sold control of Miramax to the Walt Disney Company, continuing to run the studio in quasi-independent fashion under the Disney umbrella. When the Weinsteins left Disney, they retained the right to the Dimension Films brand, which is used by The Weinstein Company (as it was by Miramax) for genre films. After the success of 1408, released in June 2007, the studio went two years without a hit.^[9] It experienced several high-level executive defections in 2008, and announced major layoffs that November.^[10] The Weinsteins have a long-standing relationship with Quentin Tarantino—all of the feature films he has directed through 2009 have been distributed either by Miramax, when it was led by the brothers, or The Weinstein Company. The successful release of his Inglourious Basterds in August 2009 was seen as a "turnaround" for the studio.^[11]

MGM, after decades as a major studio, continues to distribute motion pictures and television content as a minor, privately held media company. In April 2005, it was purchased from Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corporation by a consortium including Sony, cable company Comcast, Providence Equity Partners, and three other private investment firms. While Sony continues to hold a minority equity stake in the company, MGM has a deal with 20th Century Fox for the distribution of home video and overseas theatrical product.^[12] MGM is also the majority shareholder of the latest incarnation of United Artists, whose other lead owners are Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner. Via its original 1981 merger with UA, MGM controls the rights to the James Bond franchise. Columbia codistributed the first two Bond films starring Daniel Craig after the 2005 purchase.^[13] After a third Bond film with Craig was put on hold when MGM slipped into deep financial trouble, Sony reached an agreement with MGM in April 2011 to distribute the next entry in the series.^[14]

DreamWorks was founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen. Once again independent after two-and-a-half years under the Viacom/Paramount corporate umbrella, it is now backed by India's Reliance ADA Group.^[15] DreamWorks will not be a full-service studio—it will produce and finance films, but as it did for most of its first era as an independent, it will arrange distribution through the majors. In February 2009, after dropping out of a deal with Universal, DreamWorks struck such a deal with Disney, though Paramount will be releasing the DreamWorks pictures developed there through mid-2011.^[16] The first independent DreamWorks film to be released under the new deal, via Touchstone, was I Am Number Four in February 2011. Katzenberg, who is completely divested from the new DreamWorks, now runs DreamWorks Animation as a totally separate business. The company maintains a close-knit distribution deal with Paramount that runs through 2012.^[17]

In 2007, CBS Corporation started a new movie division, CBS Films, focusing on star-driven projects with midrange budgets of $50 million or less.^[18] The company released its first film, Extraordinary Measures, in January 2010.^[19]

The standings[link]

In 2011, a record five mini-majors each pulled in more than 1% of the total domestic box office. Summit's $415.2 million in grosses and 4.1% market share put it atop the mini-majors for the third straight year. Weinstein and its Dimension subsidiary together pulled in $291.8 million, a 2.9% share. Relativity was third with $228.3 million and 2.2%; Lionsgate was fourth with $183.4 million and 1.8%; and FilmDistrict was fifth with $126.1 million and 1.2%. In 2010, Summit led with $519.9 million in grosses and a 5.0% market share. Lionsgate was close behind with $513.9 million in grosses, good for a 4.9% share. They were far ahead of the other mini-majors, none of which reached $100 million in grosses or a 1% share.^[20] In 2009, Summit's mini-major-leading figures were $480.4 million in grosses and a 4.5% market share. Lionsgate's $401.5 million in grosses gave it a 3.8% share. Two other companies commanded market shares greater than 1%: Weinstein/Dimension (2.0%) and Overture Films (1.5%).^[21] In 2008, Lionsgate topped the mini-majors with $441.5 million in grosses, a 4.5% market share. Three other companies had over $100 million in box office grosses: Summit (2.4% market share), MGM/UA (1.7% market share), and Overture (1.1% market share).^[22]

In 2007, Lionsgate and MGM/UA were virtually tied for the position of most successful mini-major in terms of market share, each with 3.8%. No other independent studio had even a 1% market share.^[23] In 2006, Lionsgate had a 3.6% market share, The Weinstein Company had a 2.5% market share, and MGM/UA had a 1.8% market share.^[24] In 2005, the still independent DreamWorks SKG had 5.7% and Lionsgate had 3.2%. Of MGM/UA's four significant money-earners during 2005, it released three before its acquisition by the Sony-led consortium; MGM/UA's total market share for the year was 2.1%. The Weinstein Company, in its first three months of operation, gained 0.5% of the year's total market share.^[25] In 2004, DreamWorks SKG had 10.0% (more than the Paramount Motion Pictures Group), Newmarket had 4.3% (due almost entirely to The Passion of the Christ), Lionsgate had 3.2%, and MGM/UA had 2.1%.^[26]

History[link]

The majors before the Golden Age[link]

In 1909, Thomas Edison, who had been fighting in the courts for years for control of fundamental motion picture patents, won a major decision. This led to the creation of the Motion Picture Patents Company, widely known as the Trust. Comprising the nine largest U.S. film companies, it was "designed to eliminate not only independent film producers but also the country's 10,000 independent [distribution] exchanges and exhibitors."^[27] Though its many members did not consolidate their filmmaking operations, the New York–based Trust was arguably the first major North American movie conglomerate. The independents' fight against the Trust was led by Carl Laemmle, whose Chicago-based Laemmle Film Service, serving the Midwest and Canada, was the largest distribution exchange in North America. Laemmle's efforts were rewarded in 1912 when the U.S. government ruled that the Trust was a "corrupt and unlawful association" and must be dissolved. On June 8, 1912, Laemmle organized the merger of his production division, IMP (Independent Motion Picture Company), with several other filmmaking companies, creating the studio that would soon be named Universal. By the end of the year, Universal was making movies at two Los Angeles facilities: the former Nestor Film studio in Hollywood, and another studio in Edendale. The first Hollywood major was in business.^[28]

In 1916, a second powerful Hollywood studio was established when Adolph Zukor merged his Famous Players movie production house with the Jesse L. Lasky Company to form Famous Players–Lasky. The combined studio acquired Paramount Pictures as a distribution arm and eventually adopted its name. Paramount quickly surpassed Universal as Hollywood's dominant company. In 1916 as well, William Fox relocated his Fox Film Corporation from the East Coast to Hollywood and began expanding.^[29] Between 1924, when Metro Pictures combined with Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions to form MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), and 1928, the year in which the U.S. film industry converted en masse to sound film, Hollywood had a Big Two: Paramount and Loew’s Incorporated, owner of America's largest theater circuit and parent company to MGM. Through 1927, the next three largest studios were Fox, Universal, and First National (founded in 1917). Propelled by the great success of The Jazz Singer (1927), the first important feature-length "talkie", small Warner Bros. (founded in 1919) quickly entered the big leagues and acquired First National in 1928. Fox, in the forefront of sound film along with Warners, was also acquiring a sizable circuit of movie theaters to exhibit its product.

The majors during the Golden Age[link]

Between late 1928, when RCA's David Sarnoff engineered the creation of the RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) studio, and the end of 1949, when Paramount divested its theater chain—roughly the period considered Hollywood's Golden Age—there were eight Hollywood studios commonly regarded as the "majors". Of these eight, the so-called Big Five were integrated conglomerates, combining ownership of a production studio, distribution division, and substantial theater chain, and contracting with performers and filmmaking personnel: Loew's/MGM, Paramount, Fox (which became 20th Century-Fox after a 1935 merger), Warner Bros., and RKO. The remaining majors were sometimes referred to as the Little Three or the "major-minors". Two—Universal and Columbia (founded in 1919)—were organized similarly to the Big Five, except for the fact that they never owned more than small theater circuits (a consistently reliable source of profits). The third of the lesser majors, United Artists (founded in 1919), owned a few theaters and had access to production facilities owned by its principals, but it functioned primarily as a backer-distributor, loaning money to independent producers and releasing their films. During the 1930s, the eight majors averaged a total of 358 feature film releases a year; in the 1940s, the four largest companies shifted more of their resources toward high-budget productions and away from B movies, bringing the yearly average down to 288 for the decade.^[30]

Among the significant characteristics of the Golden Age was the stability of the Hollywood majors, their hierarchy, and their near-complete domination of the box office. At the midpoint of the Golden Age, 1939, the Big Five had market shares ranging from 22% (MGM) to 9% (RKO); each of the Little Three had around a 7% share. In sum, the eight majors controlled 95% of the market and all the smaller companies combined had a total of 5%. Ten years later, the picture was largely the same: the Big Five had market shares ranging from 22% (MGM) to 9% (RKO); the Little Three had shares ranging from 8% (Columbia) to 4% (United Artists). In sum, the eight majors controlled 96% of the market and all the smaller companies combined had a total of 4%.^[31]

The majors after the Golden Age[link]

1950s–1960s[link]

The end of the Golden Age had been signaled by the majors' loss of a federal antitrust case that led to the divestiture of the Big Five's theater chains. Though this had virtually no immediate effect on the eight majors' box-office domination, it somewhat leveled the playing field between the Big Five and the Little Three. In November 1951, Decca Records purchased 28% of Universal; early the following year, the studio became the first of the classic Hollywood majors to be taken over by an outside corporation, as Decca acquired majority ownership.^[32] The 1950s saw two substantial shifts in the hierarchy of the majors: RKO, perennially the weakest of the Big Five, declined rapidly under the mismanagement of Howard Hughes, who had purchased a controlling interest in the studio in 1948. By the time Hughes sold it to the General Tire and Rubber Company in 1955, the studio was a major by outdated reputation alone. In 1957, virtually all RKO movie operations ceased and the studio was dissolved in 1959. (Revived on a small scale in 1981, it was eventually spun off and now operates as a minor independent company.) In contrast, there was United Artists, which had long operated under the financing-distribution model the other majors were now progressively shifting toward. Under Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin, who began managing the company in 1951, UA became consistently profitable. By 1956—when it released one of the biggest blockbusters of the decade, Around the World in 80 Days—it commanded a 10% market share. By the middle of the next decade, it had reached 16% and was the second-most profitable studio in Hollywood. Despite RKO's collapse, the majors still averaged a total yearly release slate of 253 feature films during the decade.^[30]

The 1960s were marked by a spate of corporate takeovers. MCA, under Lew Wasserman, acquired Universal in 1962; Gulf+Western took over Paramount in 1966; and the Transamerica Corporation purchased United Artists in 1967. Warner Bros. underwent large-scale reorganization twice in two years: a 1967 merger with the Seven Arts company preceded a 1969 purchase by Kinney National, under Stephen J. Ross. MGM, in the process of a slow decline, changed ownership twice in the same span as well, winding up in the hands of financier Kirk Kerkorian. The majors almost entirely abandoned low-budget production during this era, bringing the annual average of features released down to 160.^[30] The decade also saw an old name in the industry secure a position as a leading player. In 1923, Walt Disney had founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio with his brother Roy and animator Ub Iwerks. Over the following three decades Disney became a powerful independent focusing on animation and, from the late 1940s, an increasing number of live-action movies. In 1954, the company—now Walt Disney Productions—established Buena Vista Film Distribution to handle its own product, which had been distributed for years by various majors, primarily United Artists and then RKO. (Disney's 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released by RKO, was the second biggest hit of the 1930s.) In its first year, Buena Vista had a major success with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the third biggest movie of 1954. In 1964, Buena Vista had its first blockbuster, Mary Poppins, Hollywood's biggest hit in half a decade. The company achieved a 9% market share that year, more than Fox and Warner Bros. Though over the next two decades, Disney/Buena Vista's share of the box-office would again hit similar marks, its relatively small output and exclusive focus on family movies meant that it was not generally considered a major.

1970s–1980s[link]

The early 1970s were difficult years for all the majors. Movie attendance, which had been declining steadily since the Golden Age, hit an all-time low in 1971. In 1973, MGM president James T. Aubrey Jr. drastically downsized the studio, slashing its production schedule and eliminating its distribution arm (UA would distribute the studio's films for the remainder of the decade). From fifteen releases in 1973, the next year MGM was down to five; its average for the rest of the 1970s would be even lower.^[33] Like RKO in its last days under Hughes, MGM remained a major in terms of brand reputation, but little more. MGM, however, was not the only studio to trim its release line. By the mid-1970s, the industry had rebounded and a significant philosophical shift was in progress. As the majors focused increasingly on the development of the next hoped-for blockbuster and began routinely opening each new movie in many hundreds of theaters (an approach called "saturation booking"), their collective yearly release average fell to 81 films during 1975–84.^[30] The classic set of majors was shaken further in late 1980, when the disastrously expensive flop of Heaven's Gate effectively ruined United Artists. The studio was sold the following year to Kerkorian, who merged it with MGM. After a brief resurgence, the combined studio again declined. From the mid-1980s on, MGM/UA has been at best a "mini-major", to use the present-day term.

Meanwhile, a new member was finally admitted to the club of major studios and two significant contenders emerged. With the establishment of its Touchstone Pictures brand and increasing attention to the adult market in the mid-1980s, Disney/Buena Vista secured acknowledgment as a full-fledged major. Film historian Joel Finler identifies 1986 as the breakthrough year, when Disney rose to third place in market share and remained consistently competitive for a leading position thereafter.^[34] The two contenders were both newly formed companies. In 1978, Krim, Benjamin, and three other studio executives departed UA to found Orion Pictures as a joint venture with Warner Bros. It was announced optimistically as the "first major new film company in 50 years".^[35] Tri-Star Pictures was created in 1982 as a joint venture of Columbia Pictures (then owned by the Coca-Cola Company), HBO (then owned by Time Inc.), and CBS. In 1985, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired 20th Century-Fox, the last of the five relatively healthy Golden Age majors to remain independent throughout the entire Golden Age and after.

In 1986, the combined share of the six classic majors—at that point Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, Universal, Fox, and MGM/UA—fell to 64%, the lowest since the beginning of the Golden Age. Disney was in third place, behind only Paramount and Warners. Even including it as a seventh major and adding its 10% share, the majors' control of the North American market was at a historic ebb. Orion, now completely independent of Warner Bros., and Tri-Star were well positioned as mini-majors, each with North American market shares of around 6% and regarded by industry observers as "fully competitive with the majors".^[36] Smaller independents garnered 13%—more than any studio aside from Paramount. In 1964, by comparison, all of the companies beside the then seven majors and Disney had combined for a grand total of 1%. In the first edition of Finler's The Hollywood Story (1988), he wrote, "It will be interesting to see whether the old-established studios will be able to bounce back in the future, as they have done so many times before, or whether the newest developments really do reflect a fundamental change in the US movie industry for the first times since the 20s."^[37]

1990s–present[link]

With the exception of MGM/UA—whose position was effectively filled by Disney—the old-established studios did bounce back. The purchase of Fox by Murdoch's News Corp. presaged a new round of corporate acquisitions. Between 1989 and 1994, Paramount, Warners, Columbia, and Universal all changed ownership in a series of conglomerate purchases and mergers that brought them new financial and marketing muscle. Paramount's parent company Gulf+Western was renamed Paramount Communications in 1989 and was merged with Viacom five years later. Warners merged with Time Inc. to give birth to the conglomerate Time Warner. Coke sold Columbia to Japanese electronics firm Sony also in 1989. And Universal's parent MCA was purchased by Matsushita. By the early 1990s, both Tri-Star and Orion were essentially out of business: the former consolidated into Columbia, the latter bankrupt and sold to MGM. The most important contenders to emerge during the 1990s, New Line, the Weinsteins' Miramax, and DreamWorks SKG, were likewise sooner or later brought into the majors' fold, though DreamWorks and the Weinstein brothers are now independent again.

The development of in-house pseudo-indie subsidiaries by the conglomerates—sparked by the 1992 establishment of Sony Pictures Classics and the success of Pulp Fiction (1994), Miramax's first project under Disney ownership—significantly undermined the position of the true independents. The majors' release schedule rebounded: the six primary studio subsidiaries alone put out a total of 124 films during 2006; the three largest secondary subsidiaries (New Line, Fox Searchlight, and Focus Features) accounted for another 30. Box-office domination was fully restored: in 2006, the six major movie conglomerates combined for 89.8% of the North American market; Lionsgate and Weinstein were almost exactly half as successful as their 1986 mini-major counterparts, sharing 6.1%; MGM came in at 1.8%; and all of the remaining independent companies split a pool totaling 2.3%.^[38]

Only one of the major studios changed corporate hands during the first decade of the 2000s, though it did so twice: Universal was acquired by Vivendi in 2000, and then by General Electric four years later. More developments took place among the majors' subsidiaries. The very successful animation production house Pixar, whose films were distributed by Buena Vista, was acquired by Disney in 2006. In 2008, New Line Cinema lost its independent status within Time Warner and became a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Time Warner also announced that it would be shutting down its two specialty units, Warner Independent and Picturehouse.^[39] In 2008 as well, Paramount Vantage's production, marketing, and distribution departments were folded into the parent studio,^[40] though it retained the brand for release purposes.^[41][42] Universal sold off its genre specialty division, Rogue Pictures, to Relativity Media in 2009.^[43] Disney closed down Miramax's operations in January 2010,^[44] and sold off the unit and its library that July to an investor group led by Ronald N. Tutor of the Tutor Perini construction firm and Tom Barrack of the Colony Capital private equity firm.^[45]

Organizational lineage[link]

The eight Golden Age majors[link]

The eight major film studios of the Golden Age have gone through the following significant ownership changes ("independent" meaning customarily identified as the primary commercial entity in its corporate structure; "purchased" meaning acquired anything from majority to total ownership):

Columbia Pictures[link]

• independent as CBC Film Sales, 1919–1924 (founded by Harry Cohn, Joe Brandt, and Jack Cohn)
• independent, 1924–1982 (company changes name; goes public in 1926)
• Coca-Cola, 1982–1987 (purchased by Coca-Cola; Tri-Star Pictures, a joint venture with HBO and CBS initiated in 1982—CBS drops out in 1985)
• independent as Columbia/Tri-Star (or Columbia Pictures Entertainment), 1987–1989 (divested by Coca-Cola; also in 1987, HBO drops out of Tri-Star, which merges with Columbia)
• Sony, 1989–present (purchased by Sony)

20th Century-Fox[link]

• Independent as Fox, 1915–1935 (founded by William Fox; Fox forced to sell off controlling interest in now-public company in 1930)
• Independent, 1935–1985 (merges with Twentieth Century Pictures; fully purchased by Marc Rich and Marvin Davis in 1981; Rich's interest purchased by Davis in 1984; half of Davis's interest purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in March 1985)
• News Corporation, 1985–present (purchases the remainder of Davis's shares in September)

Warner Bros.[link]

• Independent as Warner Brothers West Coast Studio, 1919–1923 (founded by Jack Warner, Harry Warner, Albert Warner, and Sam Warner)
• Independent, 1923–1929 (company changes name and goes public, brothers maintain controlling interest; Sam Warner dies in 1927)
• Independent as Warner Bros.–First National, 1929–1967 (acquires First National Pictures; syndicate led by Jack Warner, Serge Semenenko of First National Bank of Boston, and Charles Allen Jr. purchases controlling interest in 1956)
• Warner Bros.–Seven Arts, 1967–1969 (purchased by and merged with Seven Arts Productions)
• Kinney National Company, 1969–1972 (Kinney purchases Warner Bros.–Seven Arts)
• Warner Communications, 1972–1989 (Kinney spins off non-entertainment assets and changes name)
• Time Warner, 1989–present (Warner merges with Time Inc.; from 2000 to 2003, the parent company was known as AOL Time Warner, following merger with AOL)

Paramount Pictures[link]

• Independent as Famous Players–Lasky, 1916–1921 (founded as public company via merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players and Jesse L. Lasky, Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn), Dustin Farnum, and Cecil B. DeMille's Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, followed by acquisition of Paramount Pictures distribution house)
• Independent, 1922–1966 (company adopts distribution division's name)
• Gulf and Western Industries, 1966–1989 (purchased by Gulf+Western)
• Paramount Communications, 1989–1994 (Gulf+Western changes name after selling nonentertainment assets)
• Viacom, 1994–2005 (Viacom purchases Paramount)
• Viacom, 2006–present (Viacom splits into two companies: "new" Viacom—with Paramount Pictures, MTV, BET, and other cable channels—and CBS Corporation—which includes CBS Television Studios; both companies are controlled by National Amusements)

Universal Pictures[link]

• Independent, 1912–1946 (founded as public company via merger of Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Picture Co., Pat Powers's Powers Picture Co., Adam Kessel and Charles Baumann's Bison Life Motion Pictures, Mark Dintenfass's Champion Film Co., William Swanson's Rex Picture Co., and the Nestor Film Co.)
• independent as Universal-International, 1946–1952 (merges with International Pictures)
• Decca, 1952–1962 (purchased by Decca)
• MCA Inc., 1962–1990 (MCA purchases Decca)
• Matsushita Electric, 1990–1995 (Matsushita purchases MCA)
• Seagram, 1995–2000 (purchased by Seagram from Matsushita)
• Vivendi, 2000–2004 (Vivendi purchases Seagram)
• General Electric/Vivendi, 2004–2011 (jointly owned by GE (80%) and Vivendi, S.A. (20%) and merged with NBC to form NBC Universal)
• Comcast/General Electric, 2011–present (Comcast purchases 51% of redubbed NBCUniversal)

Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer[link]

• Loew's Incorporated, 1924–1959 (founded via merger of Loew's-owned Metro Pictures with Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions; controlling interest in Loew's purchased by William Fox in 1929; Fox forced to sell off interest in 1930; operational control ceded by Loew's to studio management in 1954)
• independent, 1959–1981 (fully divested by Loew's; purchased by Edgar Bronfman Sr. in 1967; purchased by Kirk Kerkorian in 1969)
• independent as MGM/UA, 1981–1992 (United Artists purchased by Kerkorian and merged into MGM; purchased by Ted Turner in 1986; repurchased by Kerkorian seventy-four days later; purchased by Giancarlo Parretti in 1990)
• Crédit Lyonnais, 1992–1997 (foreclosed upon by bank after Parretti defaulted)
• Tracinda Corporation, 1997–2005 (repurchased by Kerkorian)
• Sony/Comcast/4 private equity firms, 2005–present (purchased by Sony, Comcast, and private investment firms—Providence Equity Partners, in fact, currently owns the greatest number of shares—and privately held as a minor media company independent of Sony/Columbia)

United Artists (merged into MGM)[link]

• independent, 1919–1967 (founded by Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, D. W. Griffith, and Mary Pickford; operational control by Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin from 1951; fully purchased by Krim and Benjamin in 1956)
• Transamerica, 1967–1981 (purchased by Transamerica)
• MGM/UA, 1981–1992 (purchased by Kirk Kerkorian from Transamerica and merged into MGM; see above for further detail)

RKO Radio Pictures (defunct 1960–80, dormant 1993–97)[link]

• RCA/investment consortium, 1928–1935 (founded as public company via merger of Film Booking Offices of America studio and Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain; majority ownership by RCA from ca. 1930)
• independent, 1935–1955 (half of RCA's interest purchased by Floyd Odlum, control split between RCA, Odlum, and Rockefeller brothers; controlling interest purchased by Odlum in 1942; controlling interest purchased by Howard Hughes in 1948; Hughes interest purchased by Stolkin-Koolish-Ryan-Burke-Corwin syndicate in 1952; interest repurchased by Hughes in 1953; fully purchased by Hughes in 1954)
• General Tire and Rubber, 1955–1984 (purchased by General Tire and Rubber—coupled with General Tire's broadcasting operation as RKO Teleradio Pictures; production and distribution halted in 1957; movie business dissolved in 1959 and RKO Teleradio renamed RKO General; RKO General establishes RKO Pictures as production subsidiary in 1981)
• GenCorp, 1984–1987 (reorganization creates holding company with RKO General and General Tire as primary subsidiaries)
• Wesray Capital Corporation, 1987–1989 (spun off from RKO General, purchased by Wesray—controlled by William E. Simon and Ray Chambers—and merged with amusement park operations to form RKO/Six Flags Entertainment)
• independent, 1989–present (split off from Six Flags, purchased by Dina Merrill and Ted Hartley, and merged with Pavilion Communications; no films produced or distributed from 1993 through 1997)

Other significant, formerly independent entities[link]

• Artisan Entertainment: Purchased in 2003 by Lions Gate Entertainment
• Castle Rock Entertainment: Purchased in 1994 by Turner Broadcasting System; TBS merged with Time Warner in 1996
• The Samuel Goldwyn Company: Purchased in 1996 by John Kluge/Metromedia International; purchased in 1997 by MGM
• New Line Cinema: Purchased in 1994 by Turner Broadcasting System; TBS in 1996 merged with Time Warner; merged into Warner in 2008 as an in-name-only film distributor
• October Films: Purchased in 1997 by Universal; purchased in 1999 by Barry Diller and merged with Gramercy Pictures into USA Films; USA in 2001 acquired by Vivendi (then parent company of Universal) and merged with Good Machine and Universal Focus into Focus Features
• Orion Pictures: Purchased in 1988 by Kluge/Metromedia; purchased in 1997 by MGM
• Pixar: Purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs; purchased in 2006 by the Walt Disney Company
• Tri-Star Pictures: Consolidated in 1987 into Columbia (one of the partners in the joint venture that created it)

See also[link]

• Big Four—the four major music corporations: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI; formerly the Big Six, but Universal acquired PolyGram in 1998, and Sony and BMG merged in 2004

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Cook, David A. (2000). Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970–1979 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-23265-8.
• Eames, John Douglas (1985). The Paramount Story (New York: Crown). ISBN 0-517-55348-1.
• Finler, Joel W. (1988). The Hollywood Story, 1st ed. (New York: Crown). ISBN 0-517-56576-5.
• Finler, Joel W. (2003). The Hollywood Story, 3d ed. (London and New York: Wallflower). ISBN 1-903364-66-3.
• Hirschhorn, Clive (1983). The Universal Story (London: Crown). ISBN 0-517-55001-6.
• Hirschhorn, Clive (1999). The Columbia Story (London: Hamlyn). ISBN 0-600-59836-5.
• Jewell, Richard B., with Vernon Harbin (1982). The RKO Story (New York: Arlington House/Crown). ISBN 0-517-54656-6.
• Schatz, Thomas (1998 [1989]). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (London: Faber and Faber). ISBN 0-571-19596-2.
• Thomas, Tony, and Aubrey Solomon (1985). The Films of 20th Century-Fox (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel). ISBN 0-8065-0958-9.

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

A movie studio (aka film studio or simply studio) is a term used to describe a major Entertainment Company or Motion Picture Company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies, which is handled by the production company. The majority of companies in the entertainment industry have never owned their own studios, but have rented space from other companies.

There are also independently owned studio facilities, who have never produced a motion picture of their own because they are not Entertainment companies or Motion Picture companies; they are companies who sell only studio space.

Beginnings[link]

In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black Maria, a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. Other studio operations followed in New Jersey, New York City, and Chicago.

In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California. Although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. Early movie producers also relocated to Southern California to escape Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, which controlled almost all the patents relevant to movie production at the time.

The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios, opened in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley. In the same year, another 15 independents settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such as Culver City, Burbank, and what would soon become known as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley.

The "majors"[link]

The Big 5
By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production companies into wealthy motion picture industry conglomerates that owned their own studios, distribution divisions, and theaters, and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel, led to the sometimes confusing equation of "studio" with "production company" in industry slang. Five large companies, 20th Century Fox, RKO Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer came to be known as the "Big Five," the "majors," or "the Studios" in trade publications such as Variety, and their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as the "studio system."

The Little 3
Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists also fell under these rubrics, making a total of eight generally recognized "major studios". United Artists, although its controlling partners owned not one but two production studios during the Golden Age, had an often-tenuous hold on the title of "major" and operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films.

The minors[link]

Smaller studios operated simultaneously with "the majors." These included operations such as Republic Pictures, active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, and Monogram Pictures, which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National, the minor studios filled the demand for B-movies and are sometimes collectively referred to as Poverty Row.

The independents[link]

The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, Hal Roach, and Walter Wanger. In 1948, the federal government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the vertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegal monopoly. This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age".

Film to television[link]

Halfway through the 1950s, with television proving to be a lucrative enterprise not destined to disappear any time soon—as many in the film industry had once hoped—movie studios were increasingly being used to produce programming for the burgeoning medium. Some midsize film companies, such as Republic Pictures, eventually sold their studios to TV production concerns, which were eventually bought by larger studios, such as the American Broadcasting Company which was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 1996.

Today[link]

With the growing diversification of studios into such fields as video games, television, theme parks, home video and publishing, they have become multi-national corporations. As the studios increased in size they began to rely on production companies, like J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions, to handle many of the creative and physical production details of their feature films. Instead the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for the films made by their affiliated production companies.

Due to rising real-estate and upkeep costs, as well as the decreasing cost of CG and visual effects, many studios sold large chunks of their once massive studio spaces or backlots to private real-estate developers. Century City in Los Angeles was once part of the 20th Century Fox backlot, which was amount the largest and most famous of the studio lots. In most cases portions of the backlots were retained and are available for rental by various film and television productions. Some studios offer tours of their backlots, while Universal Pictures allows visitors to its adjacent Universal Studios Hollywood theme park to take a tram tour of the backlot where films such as Psycho and Back to the Future were once shot.

Independent Film Movement and The Studios[link]

In the 1980s and 90s, as the cost of professional 16mm film equipment decreased, along with the emergence of non-film innovations such as S-VHS and Mini-DV cameras, many young filmmakers began to make films outside the "studio system". Filmmakers such as Kevin Smith, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater made films that pushed boundaries in ways the studios were then reluctant to do. In response to these films, many distributed by "mini-studios" like Miramax, the "majors" created their own in-house mini-studios meant to focus on edgier "independent" content. Focus Features was created by Universal Pictures and Fox Searchlight was created by 20th Century Fox for this purpose.

Notable movie studios[link]

• 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (USA)
• Amblin Entertainment (USA & UK)
• Anchor Bay Entertainment (USA)
• Artisan Entertainment (USA)
• AB Svensk Filmindustri (Sweden)
• Annapurna Studios (Hyderabad, India)
• Atlas Studios (Morocco)
• Ardmore Studios (Ireland)
• AVM Productions (Chennai, India)
• Studio Babelsberg (Germany)
• Barrandov Studios (Czech Republic)
• Bavaria Film (Germany)
• Bigfoot Entertainment (USA,Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong)
• Biograph Studios (USA)
• Blue Sky Studios (USA)
• The Bridge Studios (British Columbia, Canada)
• CBS Films (USA)
• CBS Fox Video (USA & UK)
• Christie Film Company (USA)
• Ciby 2000 (Canada, Norway, UK)
• Cinema City International (Hong Kong)
• Cinergi Pictures (USA)
• Columbia Pictures (USA)
• Columbia TriStar Home Video (USA)
• Crystal Sky Pictures (USA)
• Dimension Films (USA)
• Disneynature (France)
• DreamWorks (USA)
• Edison Studios (USA)
• Edison's Black Maria (USA)
• Elstree Studios (UK)
• Eros Entertainment(India)
• Famous Players Film Company (USA)
• Full Moon Features (USA)
• Fireworks Entertainment (USA & Cuba)
• Five & Two Pictures (USA)
• Focus Features (USA)
• Fox Searchlight Pictures (USA)
• Fox Star Studios (India)
• Fox Video (USA)
• Gaumont Film Company (France)
• Gener8Xion Entertainment (USA)
• Genius Products (USA, Australia & UK)
• Globo Filmes (Brazil)
• Goldwyn Pictures (USA)
• GoodTimes Entertainment (USA)
• Gorky Film Studio (Russia)
• Grassroots Films (USA)
• Guild Home Video (USA & UK)
• Hengdian World Studios (China)
• Highdef Films (USA)
• Hollywood Pictures (USA)
• Jim Henson Home Entertainment (USA & UK)
• Kadokawa Pictures (Japan)
• Kanteerava Studios (Bangalore, (India)
• Kalem Company (USA)
• KDK Factory (USA)
• Keystone Studios (USA)
• Korda Studios (Hungary)
• Legendary Pictures (USA)
• Lenfilm (Russia)
• Lions Gate Entertainment (US, UK & Canada)
• Lubin Studios (USA)
• Lucasfilm (USA)
• Marwah Films & Video Studios (New Delhi, India)
• MediaPro Pictures (Romania)
• Méliès Films (France)
• Media Asia Entertainment Group (Hong Kong)
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (USA)
• Mirabilis Motion Pictures (USA)
• Miramax Films (USA)
• Moldova-Film (Moldova)
• Mosfilm (Soviet Union [now Russia)
• Mutual Film (USA)
• National Film Board of Canada (Canada)
• Shanghai Film Group Corporation (China)
• Nerigan Entertainment (New Zealand & Russia)
• Nestor Studios (USA)
• New Line Cinema (USA)
• New World Pictures (USA Cuba & UK)
• Nordisk Film (Denmark)
• Nu Boyana Film (Bulgaria)
• Orion Pictures (USA)
• Open Road Films (USA)
• Overture Films (USA)
• Padmalaya Studios (Hyderabad, India)
• Paramount Pictures (USA)
• Pathé (France)
• Pantelion Films (USA)
• Pinewood Studios (UK)
• Pixar Studios (USA)
• Possibility Pictures (USA)
• Premium Picture Productions (USA)
• Pure Flix Entertainment (USA)
• Ramanaidu Studios (Hyderabad, India)
• Ramoji Film City (Hyderabad, (India)
• Republic Pictures (UK)
• Revolution Studios (USA)
• Russian World Studios (Russia)
• Screen Gems (UK)
• Se-ma-for (Poland)
• Selig Polyscope Company (USA)
• Shaw Brothers Studio (Hong Kong, China)
• Shepperton Studios (UK)
• Sherwood Pictures (USA)
• Solax Studios (USA)
• Sony Pictures Entertainment (USA)
• Soyuzmultfilm (Russia)
• Spiderwood Studios (USA)
• Spyglass Entertainment (USA)
• Studio Babelsberg (Germany)
• StudioCanal (UK & Canada)
• Summit Entertainment (USA)
• Sverdlovsk Film Studio (Russia)
• Thanhouser Company (USA)
• The Studios At Las Colinas (USA)
• Three Mills Studios (UK)
• THX (USA Australia Brazil & UK)
• Toei (Japan)
• Toho (Japan)
• Touchstone Pictures (USA)
• Trak Home Video (UK)
• Triangle Film Corporation (USA)
• Tribune Entertainment (USA & Cuba)
• TriStar Pictures (USA & UK)
• Troublemaker Studios (USA)
• Twickenham Film Studios (UK)
• United Artists (USA UK Ohio & Cuba)
• Universal Studios (USA)
• USA Studios (USA)
• Victor Studios (USA)
• Village Roadshow Pictures (USA & UK)
• Vitagraph Studios (USA)
• Walt Disney Pictures (USA & UK)
• Warner Bros. (USA)
• Wimbledon Studios (UK)
• The Weinstein Company (USA)
• World Wide Pictures (USA)
• Village Roadshow (Australia)
• Vishesh Films (India)
• Yash Raj Films (India)
• KRU Studios (Malaysia)

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Movie studio

• Production company
• Major film studio
• Film producer
• Film release
• Film
• History of film
• List of cities containing film studios

Video and film[link]

2012 (film) 9 (2009 film) A (film) Actor (film) Agency (film) Bird (film)

Jonas Mekas
Born	(1922-12-23) December 23, 1922 (age 89) Semeniškiai, Biržai, Lithuania
Nationality	Lithuanian
Field	Cinema
Movement	Avant-garde cinema

Jonas Mekas (Lithuanian pronunciation: [ˈjonɐs ˈmækɐs]; born December 24,^[1] 1922) is a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.

Biography[link]

You have the possibility to give light a dimension in time.

—Jonas Mekas, 1978^[2]

In 1944, Mekas left Lithuania because of war. En route, his train was stopped in Germany and he and his brother, Adolfas Mekas (1925-2011), were imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn, a suburb of Hamburg, for eight months. The brothers escaped and were detained near the Danish border where they hid on a farm for two months until the end of the war.

After the war, Mekas lived in displaced person camps in Wiesbaden and Kassel. From 1946-48, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz and at the end of 1949, he emigrated with his brother to the U.S., settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex 16-mm camera and began to record moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel’s pioneering Cinema 16, and he began screening his own films in 1953 at Gallery East on Avenue A and Houston Street, and a Film Forum series at Carl Fisher Auditorium on 57th Street.

In 1954, he became editor of Film Culture, and in 1958, began writing his “Movie Journal” column for The Village Voice. In 1962, he co-founded Film-Makers' Cooperative (FMC) and the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. The films and the voluminous collection of photographs and paper documents (mostly from or about avant garde film makers of the 1950-1980 period) were moved from time to time based on Mekas' ability to raise grant money to pay to house the massive collection. At times, Mekas personally paid its housing rent and, at low points in external funding, he had to restrict access to the collection. Easily, he can be credited with single-handedly saving large portions of the avant garde films and associated materials.

He was part of the New American Cinema, with, in particular, fellow film-maker Lionel Rogosin. He was heavily involved with artists such as Andy Warhol, Nico, Allen Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Salvador Dalí, and fellow Lithuanian George Maciunas.

In 1964, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for showing Flaming Creatures (1963) and Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour (1950). He launched a campaign against the censorship board, and for the next few years continued to exhibit films at the Film-makers’ Cinemathèque, the Jewish Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art.

From 1964-1967, he organized the New American Cinema Expositions, which toured Europe and South America and in 1966 joined 80 Wooster Fluxhouse Coop.

In 1970, Anthology Film Archives opened on 425 Lafayette Street as a film museum, screening space, and a library, with Mekas as its director. Mekas, along with Stan Brakhage, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, James Broughton, and P. Adams Sitney, begin the ambitious Essential Cinema project at Anthology Film Archives to establish a canon of important cinematic works.

Mekas' own output ranging from narrative films (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to documentaries (The Brig, 1963) and to “diaries” such as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost (1975); Reminiscences of a Voyage to Lithuania (1972) and Zefiro torna (1992) have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world. In 2001, he released a five-hour long diary film entitled As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, assembled by hand from an archive of fifty years worth of recordings of his life. Peter Sempel filmed Jonas Mekas in the film Jonas in the Desert (1994). Mekas made an 85-minute film showing clips of 160 filmmakers he knew in Birth of a Nation (1995).

Mekas expanded the scope of his practice with his later works of multi-monitor installations. Presented as total immersive environments, they offer a new experience of his classic films and have been exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennial, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center.

In 2004, the dormant Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Flight Center (now Jetblue Terminal 5) at JFK Airport briefly hosted an art exhibition called Terminal 5^[3] curated by Rachel K. Ward^[4] and featuring the work of 18 artists^[5] including Mekas. The show featured work, lectures and temporary installations drawing inspiration from the idea of travel — and the terminal's architecture.^[5] The show was to run from October 1, 2004 to January 31, 2005^[5] — though it closed abruptly after the building itself was vandalized during the opening party.^[4][6]

Beginning in the fall of 2006, Mekas planned to film 365 short videos for Apple Computer's Video iPod, releasing one a day on his website.^[7]

Since the 1970s, he has taught film courses at the New School for Social Research, MIT, Cooper Union, and New York University.

Mekas is also a well-known Lithuanian language poet and has published many of his poems and prose in both Lithuanian and English. He has published many of his journals and diaries including "I Had Nowhere to Go: Diaries, 1944-1954," "Letters from Nowhere," and "Just like a Shadow," as well as his articles on film criticism, theory, and technique.

On November 10, 2007, Jonas Mekas opened Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius.

In its August 2010 issue, the magazine Dazed and Confused published a 8-page feature story about Mekas.

Awards and honors[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

• Guggenheim Fellowship (1966)
• Creative Arts Award, Brandeis University (1977)
• Mel Novikoff Award, San Francisco Film Festival (1989)
• Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, Ministry of Culture, France (1992)
• Lithuanian National Award, Lithuania (1995)
• Doctor of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa, Kansas City Art Institute (1996)
• Special Tribute, New York Film Critics Circle Awards (1996)
• Pier Paolo Pasolini Award, Paris (1997)
• International Documentary Film Association Award, Los Angeles (1997)
• Governors Award from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (1997)
• Atrium Doctoris Honoris Causa, Universitatis Vytauti Magni, Lithuania (1997)
• Represented Lithuania at the 51st International Art Exhibition Venice Biennial (2005)
• United States National Film Preservation Board selects "Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania" for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry (2006)
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Award (2007)
• Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (2008)
• Baltic Cultural Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the field of Arts and Science (2008)

Filmography[link]

• Guns of the Trees (1962)
• Film Magazine of the Arts (1963)
• The Brig (1964)
• Empire (1964)
• Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1964)
• Report from Millbrook (1964–65)
• Hare Krishna (1966)
• Notes on the Circus (1966)
• Cassis (1966)
• The Italian Notebook (1967)
• Time and Fortune Vietnam Newsreel (1968)
• Walden (Diaries, Notes, and Sketches) (1969)
• Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971–72)
• Lost, Lost, Lost (1976)
• In Between: 1964–8 (1978)
• Notes for Jerome (1978)
• Paradise Not Yet Lost (also known as Oona's Third Year) (1979)
• Street Songs (1966/1983)
• Cups/Saucers/Dancers/Radio (1965/1983)
• Erik Hawkins: Excerpts from “Here and Now with Watchers”/Lucia Dlugoszewski Performs (1983)
• He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life (1969/1985)
• Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990)
• Mob of Angels/The Baptism (1991)
• Dr. Carl G. Jung or Lapis Philosophorum (1991)
• Quartet Number One (1991)
• Mob of Angels at St. Ann (1992)
• Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992)
• The Education of Sebastian or Egypt Regained (1992)
• He Travels. In Search of... (1994)
• Imperfect 3-Image Films (1995)
• On My Way to Fujiyama I Met… (1995)
• Happy Birthday to John (1996)
• Memories of Frankenstein (1996)
• Birth of a Nation (1997)
• Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997)
• Letter from Nowhere – Laiskas is Niekur N.1 (1997)
• Symphony of Joy (1997)
• Song of Avignon (1998)
• Laboratorium (1999)
• Autobiography of a Man Who Carried his Memory in his Eyes (2000)
• This Side of Paradise (1999)
• Notes on Andy's Factory (1999)
• Mysteries (1966–2001)
• As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
• Remedy for Melancholy (2000)
• Ein Maerchen (2001)
• Williamsburg, Brooklyn (1950–2003)
• Mozart & Wein and Elvis (2000)
• Travel Songs (1967–1981) n
• Dedication to Leger (2003)
• Notes on Utopia (2003) 30 min,
• Letter from Greenpoint (2004)
• 365 Day Project (2007), 30 hours.
• Notes on American Film Director: Martin Scorsese (2007), 80 minutes.
• Lithuania and the Collapse of USSR (2008), 4 hours 50 minutes.
• Sleepless Nights Stories (Premiere at the Berlinale 2011)
• My Mars Bar Movie (2011)

See also[link]

• Vyt Bakaitis
• Cinema of Lithuania

References[link]

1. ^ Mekas' passport shows December 23, 1922, the date sometimes listed as his "official" date of birth; however, he was actually born on December 24, 1922, as he confirms in this video interview.
2. ^ Klaus Beekman. Avant-Grade Film. 2007, p.249
3. ^ "TWA Terminal Named as One of the Nation’s Most Endangered Places". Municipal Art Society New York, February 9th, 2004. http://mas.org/twa-terminal-named-as-one-of-the-nations-most-endangered-places/. 
4. ^ ^{a b} "A Review of a Show You Cannot See". Designobvserver.com, Tom Vanderbilt, January 14, 2005. http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=2897. 
5. ^ ^{a b c} "Now Boarding: Destination, JFK". The Architects Newspaper, September 21, 2004. http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=098&PagePosition=5. 
6. ^ "Art Exhibition at JFK Airport's TWA Terminal Abruptly Shut Down". Architectural Record, John E. Czarnecki,, October 11, 2004. http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=2897. 
7. ^ Short Films Coming Soon to an iPod Near You, All Things Considered, November 5, 2006. Producer Ben Shapiro reports on a plan by filmmaker Jonas Mekas to make short films available as a podcast.

Literature[link]

• Hans-Jürgen Tast (Hrsg.) „As I Was Moving. Kunst und Leben“ (Schellerten/Germany 2004) (z.m.a.K.) ISBN 3-88842-026-1;
• Efren Cuevas, “The Immigrant Experience in Jonas Mekas’s Diary Films: A Chronotopic Análisis of Lost, Lost, Lost”, Biography, vol. 29, n. 1, winter 2006, pp. 55–73. Available at http://dspace.unav.es/dspace/bitstream/10171/3268/1/Art%20Mekas%20Biography%20publicado.pdf

External links[link]

• Jonas Mekas at IMDB
• Jonas Mekas' website
• A Conversation between Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage
• Interview with 3:AM Magazine
• The Anthology Film Archives
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center
• Jonas Mekas in conversation with the Brooklyn Rail
• Jonas Mekas poetry in English
• A short documentary about Jonas Mekas (29mn)
• Jonas Mekas tells his life story at Web of Stories