The Little Distributor That Could

It’s unlikely that filmgoers care where their films come from anymore--or if they ever did, although certain distinctions could at one time certainly be made. MGM was the splashy factory (sometimes literally) for big-budget musicals. Warner Bros. was the hard-edged producer of gangster flicks and social drama. Universal made monster movies. Columbia meant Capra. RKO, “King Kong.”

Meaningless generalities, of course, but what have we got today? Miramax represents the cache of foreign films for people who don’t really like foreign films. DreamWorks is all about slipping intelligent movies over on a mass audience without anyone noticing, and Disney, which is related in different ways to both companies, doesn’t seem to know what it is. The remaining studios live by the give-me-a-blockbuster-or-give-me-death mentality, except maybe Paramount, but only when Scott Rudin is producing.

The thing is, any real sense of identity among the who’s-who-who-bring-you-what has been the purview of the smaller indie companies, whose independence has evaporated faster than WorldCom dividends and which are being swallowed whole by the very companies to which they were--originally, presumably--philosophically opposed.

Which is why it’s more than noteworthy that Kino Film International is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. A retrospective-tribute to the company began in New York on Friday and ends Aug. 15, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All you have to do is look at the lineup to realize what a valuable resource Kino is. And how equally treacherous is the current state of film distribution.

Founded in 1977 to oversee the Janus Collection (anyone with a passing interest in art films from the ‘40s through the ‘60s knows the double-profile company logo), Kino also distributes such film libraries as the Killiam (which includes, to name a few, Sergei Eisenstein’s “Potemkin,” Erich von Stroheim’s “Queen Kelly” and F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu”).

There are other collections under Kino’s domain--the Selznick among them--and if I wanted to take a catalog to a desert island (no, not the book, the films), it would be Kino’s.

But Kino chief Don Krim and company haven’t just been dwelling in the past, as illustrious as that past might be. If not for Kino, we probably wouldn’t have in U.S. circulation, or even have been exposed to, some of the real masters of contemporary filmmaking: Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, or Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki, or Japan’s Shohei Imamura or, for that matter, such films as Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” or Tian Zhuangzhuang’s “The Blue Kite” or Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher.” (Most are available on video and listed at www.kino.com.)

Sure, the mall movie--the popcorn movie, the blockbuster, the chick flick, the shoot-’em-up and the franchise, from the heights of “Spider-Man” to the depths of “K-19: The Widowmaker”--is fine. Sometimes. But, still, man and woman do not live by mental mush alone. Although a lot of people do a lot of talking about the preservation of film, the preservation of Kino has been rarer than a miracle, more precious than a gift. It’s been a victory for good taste.

John Anderson is a film critic at Newsday, a Tribune company.