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Similarly, in the 1990s, the growth of the Internet opened up entirely new possibilities for marketing films and connecting with audiences. The advent of video formats in the 1980s made it easier to distribute films and especially increased the range of non-theatrical outlets. But perhaps its most noteworthy accomplishment has been to remain economically viable with this kind of eclectic and eccentric inventory-especially in a period that has seen so much change in the documentary landscape. They've taken a perspective on documentary that's allowed it to find its voice."Ĭertainly, well-known FRIF titles like The Trials of Henry Kissinger (Eugene Jarecki, Alex Gibney), El Salvador: Another Vietnam (Glenn Silber, Tete Vascincellos) and Human Weapon, Ziv's 2002 examination of suicide bombing, show a company willing to take on difficult topics from alternative points of view. Jonathan and the people at FRIF embrace the idea that documentary can be subjective. "Prior to there being a place like FRIF, notions around documentary were often an informational approach-like the kind of films you'd see on public television, as innocuous and 'objective' as possible.
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"It's so important to have a clearinghouse for the kind of films we make, which are often very challenging, which provide ideas rather than information," she says. That's an achievement applauded by filmmakers like Lynne Sachs, whose Investigation of a Flame (2001) looks at the 1968 actions of the Catonsville Nine and explores issues of civil disobedience. And unlike many businesses that succeed by mining a single niche, FRIF's history has been marked by an admirable growth and diversity that continues into its second quarter-century.
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With a catalogue of 875 titles on subjects ranging from AIDS to World War II, FRIF has compiled an impressive and enduring record of commercial success and creative respect. In 1987 Icarus and independent distributor First Run Features combined their non-theatrical divisions: each company still exists as a separate corporation, but most of their films are now released under the joint banner of First Run/Icarus Films. So we had something to get started with." Co-founder Ziv departed in 1980 to return to filmmaking, and the company began to branch out into a broader range of subject areas, while developing a focus on provocative ideas and innovative aesthetic treatments. "In our first year," recalls Miller, "we were releasing several Iranian feature films, as well as a German film, The Temptation of Power (Gordon Troeller, Marie-Clause Deffarge), that was made in 1977 but predicted the Iranian revolution. He has guided Icarus from its modest beginnings to a position as one of the world's pre-eminent distributors of documentaries.Īt its inception, Icarus Films was known for its films about the Middle East-Ziv had been an organizer of New York's Middle East Film Festival-which as it turned out, gave the company a timely boost. Twenty-five years later, many would say Miller has a real job. We didn't have bigger plans or goals than that.we were young, and we didn't want real jobs." "What we thought we were doing was getting interesting films that weren't being shown in the US and getting them out to people, finding audiences for them. "I can't for the life of me think we knew what we were doing," says Miller today. And Jonathan Miller and Ilan Ziv, two college friends from New York University, launched a modest film distribution enterprise called Icarus Films. Sony's Betamax technology was battling it out with an upstart videotape format called VHS. The music was disco, the carpets were shag.