Hey guys, quick question. I have a friend who asked me if I knew if there were American companies that specialize in distributing movies from China and other parts of Asia. (Not imports brought here that were intended for the home countries only, but rather released specifically for the USA, and not including Anime-specialty distributors like Geneon). The only studio or distributor I could think of is Tai Seng, which seems to concentrate on Kung Fu movies. Any others I am not thinking of?

It seems to be very hit or miss for non kung-fu movies. Tokyo shock has quite a few titles. I think it is part of media blasters or somthing like that.

Tai Seng doesn't usually concentrate on kung-fu movies. They concentrate on any film that got a DVD release in Hong Kong that no studio in America has the rights to. You'll find many HK R0 releases on DVD that Tai Seng has released that come from any part of Asia involving any genre.

Synapse Films sometimes releases a few Asian horror films. As does Tokyo Shock.

American Cinemathque/Ventura have released a few Asian films (mostly Mr. Miike's films).

Criterion/Home Vision release their share of Asian films.

Fox has just began releasing Hong Kong films with the likes of Jackie Chan onto DVD.

Destination Films (a.k.a. Columbia/Tri-Star) have released a few Asian films on DVD (So Close, Shiri, Metropolis, etc).

Dimension/Miramax release Asian films on DVD. They're usually edited and hacked to many pieces, but with their recent release of Avalon, hopefully things change there.

DreamWorks released Ringu.

Mostly (if not all) martial arts:

Ground Zero

Crash Entertainment

Catcom Home Video

Ventura

Then of course Buena Vista has tons of exclusive rights to Region 1 releases of Asian films.

Thanks for the help. I think my friend has a movie he wants picked up for U.S. DVD release, but I don't know much about it.