Picture This! Entertainment and its sister label Picture This! Home Video have shuttered, closing its doors on September 29 according to a message posted to its website. Doug Witkins founded film company DW Diversified 25 years ago and entered the distribution market with off-shoot Picture This! thirteen years ago with a gala launch at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. His aim was licensing North American independent LGBT films to distributors and networks around the world. In 1998, the company established its domestic wing, which has released almost 100 features and shorts theatrically via home entertainment and TV in North America.
The labels championed gay genre films as well as “coming-of-age” stories, including “Garcon Stupide,” “Come Undone,” “Clara’s Summer,” and the “Boys Briefs” series. It is unclear as the company navigates bankruptcy court what will be the fate of its library. More about this at IndieWIRE
That’s too bad, they were the best selection of great LGBT movies in the U.S., their whole catalogue was also available mainstream via Netflix. Hope someone else will take over if they go down.
The last movie I rented from them was “In the arms of my enemy” (”Voleurs de chevaux”), more homoerotic than gay, and with a fabulous soundtrack.
nooooooooooooooo! their movies were the only ones i didn’t download from the internet. They were the few that were worth buying. no more punish me, young gods, and the great movies they brought us from around the world….. There most be something we could do.
I wholeheartedly agree w/ spank above. Picture This! was one of the best. I loved watching the Previews trailers before their movies and taking notes of movies yet to come that I’d want. Geeze!!! What a hammer-blow to the industry. So sorry to see them go.
Well, I guess it got too difficult to sell something on a market which is used blockbusters and downloading. Perhaps they should have compensated with fan products like T-Shirts.
I’ve bought a few of their films, and I’ve been entertained by all of them. I thought “A whole new thing” was great. The same thing happens with gay bookshops (Gays the Word in London had to have a fund raiser to stay in business a few years back) and gay publishers (the Gay Mens Press sold up to millivres, which made them more pulpy and kind of mainstream (but they still published “Marrying Tom” gy Joseph Geraci so maybe not…)). They start out with the idea that there is a gay community to “serve”, but there isn’t. Most “gay” people don’t have any clue about how gay history and how much of a struggle there was for it to even exist, let alone have a public voice. I’ve spoken to university students who didn’t know that gay sex was at one time illegal, and they certainly had no idea that the age of consent in most of the UK was 21 until after 2000! Gays don’t care about “their” history, have no concept of community, and are mostly rampant little consumer drones.
ashame but the cover art of their dvds were better than most of the films inside which says more about gay films than picture this. with such poor quality gay films no wonder they couldn’t sell dvds
15 is really good. Glue is only mediocre. Haven’t seen the others. Still, a business is a business and if they couldn’t cut it that’s disappointing, but the way things work.
THat’s a shame. I liked the movies they put out and have many of them in my collection. (DVDs, not downloads.)