Sarah Finklea

The Arthouse Ambassador

Jim Ridley

Jim Ridley
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 Updated Apr 28, 2021
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Sarah Finklea at The Belcourt.
Michael W. Bunch

Considering the impact Janus Films has had (and continues to have) on film culture, you might expect its offices to occupy a skyscraper in Manhattan. But in a quirk of good fortune — ours — much of its work is done out of a single office amid The Belcourt’s close quarters. That’s where Sarah Finklea, the Janus staffer in charge of theatrical and television sales, manages a steady stream of prints, TV sales and touring schedules. Because of Finklea, and her New York-based colleague Brian Belovarac, an operation with two full-time employees appears to have a staff of 20.

As Martin Scorsese has said, the most reliable logo in movies may be Janus’ two-headed Roman coin. In the 1950s and ’60s, the pioneering distributor made household names of Bergman, Ozu, Antonioni, Fellini, Truffaut and Kurosawa. Today, it supplies repertory films to North America’s leading arthouses; releases contemporary foreign films and cult discoveries; works in tandem with its overlapping DVD partner, the esteemed Criterion Collection; and places titles on Turner Classic Movies.

A willowy, infectiously enthusiastic ambassador for art film, Finklea started working at Janus after a college stint at Boston’s legendary Brattle Theatre. She went on to a whirlwind ride at now-defunct Cowboy Pictures, which released such films as Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar. When it shut down suddenly in 2003, Finklea found herself relaying its booking commitments to Janus — “and here I am,” she says, “nine years later.”

Nashville blipped her radar in 2006, when The Belcourt’s above-and-beyond promotion of a touring Janus retrospective became a source of office fascination in New York. Every week when the press came in, she recalls, her boss Peter Becker — co-owner of Criterion and son of longtime Janus co-owner William Becker — would stop by her desk and ask, “How are things in Nashville?” It was The Belcourt’s unimagined success with the hitherto obscure Japanese horror fantasy Hausu (House) — a spectacle that had the sellout audience cheering minutes into the movie — that spurred Janus to give the 1977 film its first U.S. release. When her husband needed to relocate to a music hub for his online ticketing business, the couple decided on Nashville.

On Finklea’s plate right now is a personal passion: the first U.S. retrospective of Pierre Étaix (rhymes with “latex”), a 1960s French comedian whose effervescent, sight-gag-laden films are, oh, about 100 times funnier than The Artist. (The retro arrives at The Belcourt this weekend, and Finklea will introduce Étaix’s film Yoyo at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.) She just finished watching a recent Janus acquisition, David Cronenberg’s early horror masterpiece The Brood — she had to angle her laptop on a recent flight so it wouldn’t disturb the attendants — and helped arrange the uploading of Janus’ 800-film collection to Hulu Plus.

At the mention of her big project for the year — a planned retrospective of the glorious films of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg director Jacques Demy — she gets wide-eyed with excitement. (So does her interviewer.) Will it play Nashville? She flashes a sneaky grin.

“Oh, yeah,” she says.