Based in Culver City, California and founded in 1989 by Marcus Hu and Jon Gerrans, Strand Releasing has served as a leader in US motion picture distribution for over thirty years. After working for Vestron Pictures in the eighties, Hu and Gerrans partnered with the Strand Theatre and the Sundance Institute to assist in the launching of their company, along with Hu’s mother who contributed a $5,000 investment for their start-up. From the beginning, Strand Releasing established a focus on foreign language, documentary, American independent and queer cinema. Its controversial and highly lauded debut theatrical release—Macho Dancer (1988) by Filipino director Lino Brocka—focused on gay prostitution in Manila’s red-light district. This provocative inauguration helped to solidify Strand Releasing’s risky, fearless brand, and since then, the company has become analogous with New Queer Cinema and arthouse film.
Strand Releasing focuses on the distribution in both the theatrical and home video markets, as well as its latest ventures into online video-on-demand channels. The company has released over 400 films to date. Its repertoire consists of works by renowned, fringe American and international directors including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Gregg Araki, François Ozon, Jean-Luc Godard, Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Aki Kaurismäki, Manoel de Oliveira, Gaspar Noé, André Téchiné, Lucrecia Martel, Kelly Reichardt and Fatih Akin.
In 2019, Strand Releasing celebrated its thirtieth anniversary with a collaborative project engaging some of the filmmakers its embraced over the past three decades. The project, “30/30 Vision: Three Decades of Strand Releasing,” consisted of an assemblage of thirty commissioned short films shot on iPhones by directors such as John Waters, Rose Troche, Bruce LaBruce and Tommy O’Haver. Each short reflects upon its filmmaker’s artistic identity, while showcasing the variety of diverse artists Strand Releasing has come to support. – Alexandra Vasile
About the Collection
The Strand Releasing Collection at the Harvard Film Archive is a small set of 35mm prints highlighting works of directors from a variety of countries including Hong Kong, France, Sweden, Mexico, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Many of the films focus on LGBTQ themes as well as socially-critical subject matter. These were donated by the distributor in 2016, and a full list can be found in the Harvard Library catalog.
